I. Executive Summary - Congressional-Executive Commission ... · I. Executive Summary STATEMENT...

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I. Executive Summary

STATEMENT FROM THE CHAIRS

When the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (Com-mission) was established in 2000, the prevailing wisdom underpin-ning U.S.-China relations maintained that increased trade and eco-nomic interconnectivity, as well as diplomacy and robust cultural exchange, would lead to greater openness and political liberaliza-tion within China.

In the years that followed, the Chinese economy grew dramati-cally, while the Chinese Communist Party became even more deep-ly entrenched in the political power structure and deeply com-mitted to preserving its monopoly on power through state-spon-sored repression, surveillance, and indoctrination. In the aftermath of the violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the fall of the Berlin Wall later that same year, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping articulated a foreign policy strategy in which China would not try to assume a leadership role in international affairs, but rather ‘‘hide its capabilities and bide its time’’ (taoguang yanghui). Now, under the leadership of current Chinese President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, however, we see an as-cendant and increasingly aggressive China, seeking to take center stage in the world, and in so doing, determined to shape new global norms on development, trade, the internet, and even human rights. All the while, the fundamental authoritarian character of China’s political system remains the same.

The Chinese government’s disregard for human rights and the rule of law most directly affects the Chinese people—as evidenced by the more than 1,300 active cases of political and religious pris-oners contained in the Commission’s far from exhaustive Political Prisoner Database. The Commission’s Annual Report painstakingly documents rights violations in ethnic minority regions, religious freedom violations, harassment of rights defenders and lawyers, suppression of free speech, large-scale forced evictions, onerous re-strictions on civil society and more—all of which are the markings of a repressive, one-party state.

The report that follows highlights the dire human rights situa-tion inside China and the continued downward trajectory, by vir-tually every measure, since Xi Jinping became Communist Party General Secretary in 2012 and President in 2013—the latter post likely to be his beyond 2023. Of particular concern is the mass, ar-bitrary, internment of as many as 1 million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in ‘‘political reeducation’’ camps in western China. Reports indicate that this may be the largest incar-ceration of an ethnic minority population since World War II, and that it may constitute crimes against humanity. Local officials in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have used alarm-ing political rhetoric to describe the purpose of this government policy, including ‘‘eradicating tumors’’ and ‘‘spray[ing] chemicals’’ on crops to kill the ‘‘weeds.’’ In response to these developments, an international expert described the XUAR as ‘‘a police state to rival North Korea, with a formalized racism on the order of South Afri-can apartheid.’’ 1

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China’s authoritarianism at home directly threatens our free-doms as well as our most deeply held values and national interests. Inside China, American citizens are targeted with exit bans pre-venting them from leaving China, often in order to resolve business disputes or pressure their family members or colleagues to cooper-ate with Chinese courts; American citizens are detained or de-ported for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chi-nese government; American journalists are harassed and intimi-dated; and American business interests are threatened by rampant intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.

Additionally, the ‘‘long arm’’ of the Chinese Communist Party ex-tends beyond China’s borders and is increasingly pervasive and multifaceted under the direction of an enhanced United Front Work Department, a Party institution used to influence Chinese in-dividuals at home and abroad to neutralize possible challenges to its ideological and policy agenda. The Party’s efforts to export its authoritarianism abroad takes a multitude of forms, including but not limited to the following: interference in multilateral institu-tions; threatening and intimidating rights defenders and their fam-ilies; imposing censorship mechanisms on foreign publishers and social media companies; asserting ‘‘cyber-sovereignty’’ and ‘‘national internets’’; influencing academic institutions and critical analysis of China’s past history and present policies; and threatening Amer-ican companies who do not conform with China’s narrative on ‘‘sen-sitive topics’’ like Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. So, too, Chinese government foreign investment and development, which will likely reach record levels with its ambitious and far-reaching Belt and Road Initiative, is accompanied by a robust non-democratic political agenda as are other manifestations of what some experts are call-ing Chinese ‘‘sharp power.’’ The Chinese government is actively seeking to leverage its economic power to extend the influence of its political model.

The ever-expanding scope of domestic repression documented in the pages that follow directly affects an increasing number of Chi-nese citizens, stirring resentment, dissent, and even activism in un-likely places. As American policymakers revisit the assumptions that previously informed U.S.-China relations, and seek to chart a new path forward, it is vital that our foreign policy prioritizes the promotion of universal human rights and the protection of basic human dignity, principles the Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to redefine. Such pursuits have merit on their own accord, and they are also inextricably linked to vital U.S. national inter-ests, including regional stability in the Indo-Pacific, the future of young and emerging democracies in our hemisphere, and the strength of our own civic institutions domestically. It is in this con-text that we, as Chairman and Cochairman of the Congressional- Executive Commission on China, submit the Commission’s 2018 Annual Report.

Senator Marco Rubio Representative Chris Smith Chair Cochair


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INTRODUCTION

In recent years the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (Commission) has reported on Chinese President and Com-munist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s consolidation and per-sonalization of political power—a trend which reached new heights at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017, and the March 2018 meetings (Two Sessions) of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Polit-ical Consultative Conference in Beijing. The political sensitivity of these events was underscored by the control and censorship of news and online discussion, and the implementation of ‘‘stability maintenance’’ activities to quash citizen advocacy and petitioning. No clear successor for Party General Secretary emerged during the 19th Party Congress in October, an omission that presaged the pas-sage of amendments to the Party constitution confirming Xi Jinping’s paramount authority. The March 2018 amendments en-shrining the principle of ‘‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’’ in China’s Constitution and removing the two-term limit on the presidency signaled Xi’s inten-tion to retain leadership of China beyond the end of his second term as president in 2023, a distinct break with China’s decades- long model of authoritarian governance grounded in ‘‘collective leadership’’ and orderly succession.

Another key development at the Two Sessions was the establish-ment of an anticorruption agency, the National Supervisory Com-mission (NSC). The investigatory and supervisory functions of the NSC appear to extend Xi Jinping’s signature anticorruption cam-paign against Party officials to a much broader swath of public sec-tor personnel of over 100 million people, including state-owned en-terprise employees, public hospital staff, and public educators. Moreover, the NSC is authorized to use ‘‘confinement’’ (liuzhi), a new form of extrajudicial detention, for at least three months with-out a guarantee of access to counsel. The NSC is also authorized to place any private citizen, regardless of their profession or party membership status, under liuzhi if they are suspected of involve-ment in official misconduct. The structure of the NSC further blurs the line between the Party and government, as does the far-reach-ing reorganization of Party and government agencies approved at the Two Sessions.

These developments effectively remove many of the protections put in place in the late 1970s and during the 1980s in the wake of the violent and chaotic Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping and Party leadership at that time established these institutional meas-ures, warning China to protect against ‘‘the excessive concentration of power . . . particularly the first secretary, who takes command and sets the tune for everything . . ..’’ 2 As Xi emerged this year with near total policymaking authority, many experts drew com-parisons to the cult-of-personality era of former Party Chairman Mao Zedong. One commentator deemed it the ‘‘end of China’s 40- year-long reform era.’’ 3

While Xi consolidated his political power at central and sub-na-tional levels, the Party and government further tightened the space for civil society and rights advocacy. Many international non-gov-


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ernmental organizations (NGOs) submitted reports in advance of the November 2018 session of the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Chinese government’s com-pliance with international human rights standards. The NGOs doc-umented multiple violations of international legal standards and worsening conditions for civil society, rights defense, religious free-dom, ethnic minority rights, and freedom of expression. Several submissions also highlighted the July 2017 death in custody of writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo for whom au-thorities failed to provide adequate medical care. Rights groups also censured the Chinese government for the illegal home confine-ment of his widow Liu Xia for eight years, despite the absence of any criminal charge or judicial proceeding against her. She was fi-nally released and permitted to travel to Germany in July 2018, mere days before the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death in state custody.

Authorities maintained tight restrictions in many spheres of civil society advocacy, often giving priority to the suppression of grass-roots mobilization and the sharing of information online. Chinese authorities continued to severely restrict the ability of civil society organizations to work on labor issues, in keeping with a national crackdown on labor NGOs that began in 2015. Strikes continued, however, with the vast majority of strikes this reporting year relat-ing to non-payment of wages. Additionally, the Commission ob-served continuing restrictions on individuals and groups working on women’s rights, the environment, and public health advocacy. Civil society groups’ social media accounts were censored or shut down this past year, reflecting the government’s awareness of the power of online communications. Moreover, in a related regulatory development, administrators of social media groups (e.g., WeChat, QQ, and other group messaging platforms) may now be held liable for the views expressed by members of their respective chat groups.

Authorities continued to harass, abuse, and detain individuals by means including extralegal ‘‘black jails,’’ forced psychiatric commit-ment of individuals without mental illness, and ‘‘political reeduca-tion’’ centers, the latter specifically used to detain members of eth-nic minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Authorities apply broadly defined provisions in the PRC Criminal Law, such as crimes of ‘‘endangering state security’’ and ‘‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’’ for a range of activities that are protected under international human rights standards. The government violated detainees’ rights under the PRC Criminal Procedure Law, including through what appeared to be coerced confessions in the cases of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai and Tai-wan NGO volunteer Lee Ming-cheh. Reports showed that authori-ties continued to deny or failed to provide adequate medical care to detainees, a violation of international human rights standards that may amount to torture. There were also reports of detainees being forced to ingest unknown ‘‘medications.’’ The sudden and un-expected death in February 2018 of prominent human rights law-yer Li Baiguang, just weeks after he visited Washington, D.C., led some observers to claim that he was the latest victim in Xi’s sweep-ing crackdown on rights lawyers and advocates. In the more than three years since the July 2015 crackdown on human rights law-


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yers and defenders, which has affected over 300 individuals and led to 14 criminal convictions, authorities continued to target promi-nent rights defenders and lawyers with torture (Yu Wensheng), imprisonment (Wu Gan, Jiang Tianyong), cancellation of law li-censes (Li Heping, Xie Yanyi) and other forms of harassment. Authorities stopped Li Wenzu, the wife of detained lawyer Wang Quanzhang, from completing a 100-kilometer walk from her home in Beijing municipality to Tianjin municipality, where Wang re-portedly is being held, to mark Wang’s 1,000th day in incommuni-cado detention.

The Chinese government remained one of the worst jailers of journalists, with estimates of individuals in detention or impris-oned in connection with their reporting ranging from 41 to more than 50, including the founders of human rights monitoring websites and citizen journalists. Lu Yuyu, founder of an initiative to track labor protests and strikes called ‘‘Not-the-News,’’ is serving a four-year sentence in Yunnan province. The cases of Liu Feiyue, founder of the human rights monitoring website Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch; Huang Qi, founder of another rights monitoring website, 64 Tianwang; and Zhen Jianghua, executive director of Human Rights Campaign in China, an online platform that cam-paigns for human rights advocates and victims of rights abuses, are pending. According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China’s 2017 survey, working conditions for foreign reporters in China de-teriorated in 2017, demonstrated by accounts of official harassment of reporters, news assistants, and sources; attempts to interfere with coverage of issues that authorities deemed ‘‘sensitive’’; restric-tions on travel to areas along China’s borders and ethnic minority regions; and visa renewal delays and denials.

The Party and government continued implementing repressive policies in Tibetan autonomous areas, including extensive and in-trusive surveillance, strict regulations and rules to restrict Tibet-ans’ religious and cultural rights, and pervasive displays of police and military force. The Chinese government persists in regarding Tibetans’ spiritual leader, the 83-year old Dalai Lama, as a ‘‘mas-termind’’ of ‘‘separatist forces’’ and maintains that only it has the right to decide the Dalai Lama’s successor, attempting to exert state control over a venerated and sacred religious process. In a case that drew widespread international condemnation, in May 2018, Chinese authorities in Qinghai province sentenced Tashi Wangchug to five years in prison for ‘‘inciting separatism’’ in con-nection with his interview with the New York Times about his Ti-betan language advocacy. In August, the Qinghai High People’s Court rejected Tashi Wangchug’s appeal.

Official control and scrutiny over religious activity increased as revisions to the Regulations on Religious Affairs took effect in Feb-ruary 2018, national state-sanctioned religious organizations an-nounced major plans to ‘‘sinicize’’ religion in China, and the Party’s United Front Work Department took over responsibility for direct oversight of religious affairs. In Henan province, authorities report-edly banned at least 100 Protestant churches from meeting after the revised regulations went into effect in February, and also de-stroyed religious iconography in believers’ homes. In September, set against the backdrop of a broader crackdown on Chinese Chris-


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tians, reports emerged that a deal was imminent between the Holy See and the Chinese government. Under the reported deal, the Holy See would recognize seven ‘‘illegitimate bishops’’ approved by the government, and Chinese authorities would nominate future Chinese bishops that the Holy See would be able to veto. Both sides reportedly agreed not to publish the agreement after its sign-ing. As of mid-September the deal was not yet finalized, but Chi-nese Catholics had expressed concerns in reaction to earlier reports of an impending agreement that the Holy See would make conces-sions that would weaken and further divide the Chinese Catholic community. Official repression of Hui Muslim believers also inten-sified, with local governments in some areas removing ‘‘Arabic style’’ architecture, banning children and youth from participating in religious activities, and prohibiting calls to prayer and the sale of the Quran. Authorities also persisted in their crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners, subjecting them to abusive treatment, especially when in custody.

Chinese authorities continued to implement coercive population control policies that violate international standards, despite the shift to a ‘‘universal two-child policy.’’ Now in its third consecutive year, the new policy has not been effective in spurring population growth, reportedly prompting the government to commission re-search on removing birth restrictions completely. Decades of coer-cive population control policies have exacerbated China’s demo-graphic challenges, which include a rapidly aging population, shrinking workforce, and sex ratio imbalance. A lack of economic opportunity and China’s sex ratio imbalance contributed to the risk of individuals in Southeast Asian countries being trafficked into China for forced labor and forced marriage. In addition, the Chi-nese government continued to treat North Korean refugees as ille-gal economic migrants and maintained a policy of repatriating un-documented North Koreans, leaving the refugees vulnerable to human trafficking within China and imprisonment, torture, or death upon return to North Korea.

The long-term viability of Hong Kong’s ‘‘one country, two sys-tems’’ framework remained tenuous given the continued erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, as guaranteed under the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ policy enshrined in Hong Kong’s Basic Law. The ‘‘political screening’’ and ultimate disqualification prior to the March 2018 by-election of several prospective candidates for the Legislative Council based on their political beliefs, marked a significant set-back for pro-democracy forces and called into question their ability to effectively use the existing political system to secure democratic reforms. Mainland officials used threats and intimidation against individuals based on their political association and beliefs; mem-bers of pro-democracy group Demosisto were reportedly detained and extensively questioned when they attempted to leave the main-land and return to Hong Kong. Also, this past year, Hong Kong and mainland officials continued negotiations and finalized ‘‘co-lo-cation’’ plans for the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou- Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link. Activists, politicians, and lawyers criticized the co-location plan, which permits mainland law enforcement to operate in a designated ‘‘Mainland Port Area’’ in


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the Hong Kong train station, in apparent violation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

The subsequent chapters of this report document these and other human rights and rule of law developments in China during the Commission’s 2018 reporting year that spans, roughly, September 2017 through September 2018. General themes and key develop-ments covered in the body of this report are outlined below.

OVERVIEW

Over the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, the following general themes and key developments emerged:

1. Unprecedented Repression of Ethnic Minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 2. Party Control Over Government, Society, and Business Dra-matically Increases 3. Increasing Use of Technology as a Tool of Repression

Unprecedented Repression of Ethnic Minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the area in western China that Chinese officials have promoted as an impor-tant hub for Belt and Road Initiative development projects, wit-nessed a severe deterioration with respect to human rights. Au-thorities have targeted members of the region’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minority populations, including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Hui, with reports of mass internment in harsh ‘‘polit-ical reeducation’’ centers or camps and restrictions on religious practice and ethnic cultural and linguistic traditions. Several lead-ing experts characterized the region as a ‘‘digital police’’ or ‘‘surveil-lance’’ state, and a potential incubator for high-tech social controls that the government may soon employ more broadly.

Since Chen Quanguo’s appointment as XUAR Party Secretary in August 2016, reports have documented the escalation of rights abuses against local ethnic minority populations. Chen previously served in the same position in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where he imposed similarly onerous restrictions. This past year the mass surveillance and securitization of the XUAR was starkly illus-trated by the extrajudicial detention of 1 million or more individ-uals in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers or camps—making it the largest mass internment of an ethnic minority population in the world today. Individuals may be detained for a number of reasons, including frequency of prayer, expression of ‘‘politically incorrect’’ views, history of travel abroad, and connections with people outside of China. Detentions appear to be indefinite in most cases. Re-gional government authorities reportedly ordered officials in some XUAR jurisdictions to meet detention quotas, and local orphanages were reportedly overcrowded due to the number of children requir-ing care while both parents are held in the camps. A May 2018 As-sociated Press report documented propagandistic slogans that de-tainees were required to chant—‘‘Thank the Party! Thank the Motherland! Thank President Xi!’’—before being permitted to eat.4 The ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers are reportedly fortified with barbed wire, reinforced doors, and bombproof surfaces. Security


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personnel have subjected detainees to torture (including the use of interrogation chairs called ‘‘tiger chairs’’), medical neglect and mal-treatment, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, lack of adequate clothing in cold temperatures, and other forms of abuse. Reports have also emerged of a number of deaths in the camps. Reports in May 2018 indicated that Chinese authorities were soliciting public bids for the construction of more camps and additional security fea-tures for existing ones. In addition to those detained in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers, rights groups reported that as of June 2018, authorities may have forced an additional 2.2 million XUAR resi-dents to attend day or evening ‘‘education sessions.’’

Analysis of Chinese government data published by the organiza-tion Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) in July 2018 showed that 21 percent of all criminal arrests in China in 2017 took place in the XUAR, which has 1.5 percent of China’s popu-lation. These figures do not include detentions in ‘‘reeducation’’ camps, which are carried out extrajudicially, though authorities re-portedly transferred some ‘‘reeducation’’ camp detainees to prison after a period of time. It remained difficult for foreign journalists, NGO representatives, or senior diplomats to travel or work freely in the region, making precise reporting on the numbers of those de-tained in the camps difficult to ascertain. Figures ranged anywhere from hundreds of thousands to upwards of a million, according to rights groups, scholars, and media organizations. Authorities in the XUAR show no indication of slowing or halting the detentions, and in fact government procurement documents indicate plans to build additional detention facilities, underscoring the ongoing nature of the crisis.

Those not subject to ‘‘transformation through education’’ in de-tention still faced daily intrusions in their home life, including com-pulsory homestays whereby Communist Party officials are sent to live with local Uyghur and Kazakh families, including families with no adult male present because the men in the family have been de-tained in ‘‘reeducation’’ camps. Families are required to provide in-formation regarding their daily prayer habits and political views and are subjected to ‘‘political education’’ administered by the live- in Party official.

The data-driven surveillance in the XUAR is facilitated by iris and body scanners, voice pattern analyzers, DNA sequencers, and facial recognition cameras in neighborhoods, on roads, and in train stations. Two large Chinese firms, Hikvision and Dahua Tech-nology, have profited greatly from the surge in security spending, reportedly winning upwards of US$1.2 billion in government con-tracts for large-scale surveillance projects in the XUAR. Authorities employ hand-held devices to search smart phones for encrypted chat applications (apps) and require residents to install monitoring apps on their cell phones. More traditional security measures are also employed, including extensive police checkpoints. The rise in security personnel has accompanied the proliferation of ‘‘conven-ience police stations,’’ a dense network of street corner, village, and neighborhood police stations that enhance authorities’ ability to closely surveil and police local communities.

Developments in the XUAR had a direct impact on U.S. inter-ests, most notably the detention of dozens of family members of at


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least six U.S.-based Uyghur journalists employed by Radio Free Asia, as well as the detention of dozens of family members of prominent U.S.-based Uyghur rights activist, Rebiya Kadeer, in an apparent attempt by the Chinese government to silence effective reporting on human rights conditions in the XUAR and Uyghur rights advocacy. Additionally, reports emerged of Chinese authori-ties attempting to influence, intimidate, and otherwise harass other Uyghurs living abroad, including in the United States, to get them to return to China, or monitor and silence them while abroad.

Party Control Over Government, Society, and Business Dramatically Increases

This past year, the purview of the Party continued to expand into many sectors of public life, eliminating the tenuous separation that previously existed between the Party and government agencies. In previous decades, the Party had allowed experimentation and vary-ing degrees of autonomy in local- and provincial-level implementa-tion of central policy decisions. Under Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, that modicum of autonomy continues to shrink with the Party apparatus reasserting itself over the government. In Sep-tember 2017, senior Party officials began a process of amending China’s Constitution, which was finalized in the March 2018 meet-ing of the National People’s Congress. A new sentence was added to Article 1 in China’s Constitution after ‘‘[t]he socialist system is the basic system of the People’s Republic of China’’ that reads, ‘‘The defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Communist Party of China.’’ More significantly for Xi Jinping’s personalization of power, ‘‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’’ was added to both the Party Constitution and China’s Constitution, joining Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as the three prin-ciples guiding Chinese political life. Central to the doctrine, and Xi’s aspirational promise of the ‘‘Chinese dream,’’ is the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party and one-party rule.

In another major move to elevate and consolidate the Party’s con-trol over government work, at the end of March, the Party Central Committee issued a massive restructuring plan for Party and gov-ernment agencies to be completed by the end of 2018. This process has been described by expert Carl Minzner as the ‘‘re-Partyization of the bureaucracy.’’ One of the key changes in this sweeping reor-ganization plan was the rise of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a Party institution used to influence and neutralize pos-sible challenges to its ideological and policy agenda. The functions of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), which previously oversaw religious affairs, are now subsumed by the UFWD. Some commentators noted that the change was evidence that the Party views control of religious affairs as central to main-taining its power. The stated rationale for the restructuring of SARA was to unify and strengthen the Party’s control over ‘‘reli-gious work.’’ In addition to religious affairs work, the UFWD has also taken over management of ethnic affairs, including the man-agement of regions with sizeable ethnic minority populations like the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region—consistent with Xi Jinping’s emphasis on the importance


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of ‘‘sinicizing’’ ethnic and religious minorities. The UFWD also ab-sorbed the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, giving the Party much clearer authority to monitor and manage the affairs of Chinese citi-zens who are living outside of China. One analyst voiced concern that this was an ‘‘unprecedented extension of Party influence abroad.’’

The reorganization plan also restructured authority and manage-rial responsibilities of Party entities and Chinese government agen-cies in the area of the press and media. The plan positioned the Party’s Central Propaganda Department (CPD) in a ‘‘leadership’’ role with direct management responsibilities for news media, pub-lishing, and film. While the CPD and its lower level bureaus have long coordinated ideological messaging, the CPD’s enhanced mana-gerial role reportedly reflects Party efforts to rein in increasingly complex digital news, communications, and entertainment plat-forms and ensure dissemination of a unified message about China within and outside of China. Among the key provisions addressing managerial structures and authority was the merger of three major broadcast entities—China Central Television, China National Radio, and China Radio International—into China Media Group domestically and Voice of China internationally. Official expla-nations of the broadcasting agency’s global name of Voice of China emphasize its role in ‘‘telling China’s story well’’ to an international audience in polished and innovative ways.

The Party also sought to expand its role in commercial enter-prises. In October 2017, the Party amended its constitution to stip-ulate that Party committees play a ‘‘leading role’’ in the decision-making of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Multiple SOEs also re-portedly proposed granting internal Party groups a greater deci-sionmaking role in joint ventures with foreign companies. The gov-ernment is also reportedly exploring purchasing stakes in major technology firms including Alibaba and Tencent.

Increasing Use of Technology as a Tool of Repression

This reporting year, consistent with the trend regarding the Par-ty’s expanding reach, the Commission observed the Party and gov-ernment re-inserting itself into the private lives of Chinese citizens through expanded collection of biometric data, growing surveillance networks, and continued development of the social credit system. Reports show that social and political management of the Chinese people was aided by smart technology and advances in artificial in-telligence (AI) in new ways this past year, including efforts to cre-ate ‘‘a pervasive system of algorithmic surveillance.’’ 5 The Chinese government continued to expand its video surveillance system this past year, with the primary aim of ‘‘maintaining social stability.’’ Also known as Skynet, the system included over 27 million surveil-lance cameras nationwide as of September 2017. The effort was buttressed by the creation of biometric databases to contain infor-mation gathered from saliva and blood samples from individuals, in some cases collected without their informed consent, amplifying privacy concerns. As of December 2017, the government had also reportedly spent 3.1 billion yuan (approximately US$500 million) on ‘‘Sharp Eyes,’’ considered the rural version of China’s Skynet surveillance project. By 2020, China aims to complete a nationwide


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facial recognition and surveillance network, with ‘‘100 percent sur-veillance and facial recognition coverage and total unification of its existing databases across the country.’’ 6

Chinese companies like Alibaba (and its affiliate Ant Financial) and Tencent (which owns the popular messaging platform WeChat) can be required to hand over data on Chinese citizens. Ant Finan-cial, which has pioneered the commercial credit rating product Ses-ame Credit, has indicated its intention to ‘‘share information col-lected on trustworthiness and untrustworthiness with the State Credit Information-Sharing Platform in a timely manner.’’ 7 The PRC Cybersecurity Law, which took effect in June 2017, requires companies to store user data inside mainland China, resulting in growing privacy concerns. American companies, including Apple, which transferred operations of iCloud services for mainland Chi-nese accounts to a state-owned firm in February 2018, will likely be compelled to disclose users’ information to authorities, a par-ticular concern for users who may be targeted because they are perceived as a threat to the Party.

As of March 31, 2018, access to non-licensed virtual private net-works (or VPNs)—previously used to send secure emails or data or to access websites blocked by Chinese authorities—is no longer per-mitted. While most analyses of this development centered around the far-reaching censorship implications, a secondary impact is the strengthening of the state’s surveillance apparatus as it relates to foreign companies whose electronic communications and data transmissions are increasingly vulnerable.

The government continued to work with Chinese companies to develop and implement a social credit system based on the gov-erning principle, ‘‘once untrustworthy, always restricted.’’ 8 Pilot projects of the nascent social credit system have begun to aggregate vast amounts of data on citizens, with a view toward shaping and even engineering citizens’ behavior. The social credit system is grounded in a broader political control framework known as ‘‘social management’’ or ‘‘social governance,’’ which the Party views as vital to maintaining power. The system does not simply rate finan-cial activities, rather it aims to reward or punish a variety of ac-tions pertaining to economic as well as social and political conduct.9 According to media reports, at least 9 million Chinese have been banned from travelling domestically in connection to the social credit system, though the system is still in its pilot stages. One ob-server described the Party’s plans for the social credit system as ‘‘Orwellian’’ and ‘‘a preemptive way of shaping the way people think and shaping the way people act.’’ 10

Notes to Section I—Executive Summary 1 Rian Thum, ‘‘What Really Happens in China’s ‘Re-Education’ Camps,’’ New York Times, 15

May 18. 2 Evan Osnos, ‘‘Xi Jinping May Be President for Life. What Will Happen to China?’’ New York-

er, 26 February 18. 3 James Doubek, ‘‘China Removes Presidential Term Limits, Enabling Xi Jinping To Rule In-

definitely,’’ NPR, 11 March 18. 4 Gerry Shih, ‘‘China’s Mass Indoctrination Camps Evoke Cultural Revolution,’’ Associated

Press, 18 May 18. 5 Anna Mitchell and Larry Diamond, ‘‘China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone,’’ At-

lantic, 2 February 18. 6 ‘‘China Aims for Near-Total Surveillance, Including in People’s Homes,’’ Radio Free Asia, 30

March 18.


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7 National Development and Reform Commission, ‘‘Commission Signs Memorandum of Under-standing on Rewards and Punishments With Ant Financial Services Group’’ [Wowei yu mayi jinrong fuwu jituan lianhe jiangcheng beiwanglu], 3 August 16.

8 Jamie Fullerton, ‘‘China’s ‘Social Credit’ System Bans Millions From Travelling,’’ Telegraph, 24 March 18.

9 Shazeda Ahmed, ‘‘Who’s Really Responsible for Digital Privacy in China?’’ Asia Society, ChinaFile, 30 May 18.

10 Simina Mistreanu, ‘‘Life Inside China’s Social Credit Laboratory,’’ Foreign Policy, 3 April 18.


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RECOMMENDATIONS TO CONGRESS AND THE ADMINISTRATION

As mentioned earlier in the Executive Summary, there is a grow-ing consensus that U.S.-China policy is in need of a readjustment. In December 2017, the Administration released the ‘‘National Secu-rity Strategy of the United States of America’’ (NSS), which identi-fied the current Chinese government as a ‘‘revisionist power’’ seek-ing to ‘‘shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests’’ and engaged in efforts to ‘‘repress’’ its society. There has long been the temptation to view human rights and the rule of law as tangential issues in bilateral relations, sidelined from economic and security interests, but the NSS concluded by saying that the U.S. Govern-ment must ‘‘raise our competitive game’’ and employ all of the ‘‘tools of national power’’ to deal with the challenges coming from illiberal and authoritarian states, including China. In this vein, the Commission makes the following recommendations for consider-ation by Congress and the Administration, recognizing that, since the end of World War II, a shared commitment to universal prin-ciples and the rule of law are the foundation upon which coopera-tive alliances and security partnerships, multilateral consultative mechanisms, and the free flow of trade and investment depend. Any effort to rethink U.S. Government approaches to the current Chinese government should recognize that pressing for adherence to universal standards and insistence on greater reciprocity ad-vance American economic and security interests and the interests of Chinese citizens eager for peace, rights protections, and genuine political reform.

• Advocate for Political Prisoners. In meetings with Chinese government officials, Administration officials at the highest levels and Members of Congress should raise cases of human rights abuse and publicly articulate why China’s continued detention of political and religious prisoners harms U.S.-China relations. Experience demonstrates that raising individual prisoner cases, publicly and privately, can result in improved treatment, lighter sentences or, in some cases, release from custody, detention, or imprisonment. As demonstrated by the case of Liu Xia, who left China in July 2018 and is now living in Germany, sustained and consistent inter-national advocacy on behalf of prisoners can bring results. The Ad-ministration should consider creating a Special Advisor for Reli-gious and Political Prisoners to coordinate interagency efforts on behalf of political and religious prisoners in China and globally. Members of Congress are encouraged to ‘‘adopt’’ individual pris-oners and advocate on their behalf, including through the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s ‘‘Defending Freedoms Project’’ or the Commission’s #FreeChinasHeroes initiative.

• Embed Human Rights Throughout Bilateral Relations. The Administration should develop a comprehensive strategy to ad-vance human rights through other issues on the U.S.-China agen-da. Working with Congress, the Administration should develop an action plan and implementation guidelines to embed human rights, rule of law, and democratic accountability goals into the critical mission strategies of all U.S. Government entities interacting with the Chinese government. Isolating human rights discussions only to State Department-led bilateral human rights dialogue implies


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that human rights concerns are unconnected to other bilateral in-terests. The Administration should consider creating an Inter-agency Policy Committee (IPC) to coordinate human rights policy on China throughout the U.S. Government.

• Prioritize Reciprocity. The Administration should seek a rules-of-the-road agreement that will correct long-standing diplo-matic, trade, investment, media, and cultural and academic ex-change imbalances in U.S.-China relations. The Administration should take appropriate actions to ensure that U.S.-based news and social media outlets and academic and non-governmental orga-nizations (NGOs) have the same freedom to operate, publish, and broadcast afforded to a growing number of Chinese government- sponsored and funded think tanks, academic institutions, and media entities in the United States. The Administration should take steps to limit the growth of Chinese government-funded Con-fucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms on U.S. college cam-puses and in primary and secondary schools, and seek greater transparency and faculty oversight over those that continue to op-erate as part of U.S. academic institutions.

• Focus on Commercial Rule of Law. Working with Con-gress, the Administration should press the Chinese government to discontinue harmful practices and policies that have the effect of restricting or limiting U.S. trade and investment in China to ad-dress the lack of reciprocity between the United States and China and strengthen existing laws and regulations to scrutinize Chinese investments in various U.S. business sectors, including by bol-stering the capacity of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) as required by the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law No. 115–232). The Adminis-tration should publish information collected from U.S. businesses about requests from the Chinese government regarding censorship, data and forced technology transfers, and surveillance, and work with like-minded World Trade Organization members to pursue ne-gotiations on restriction of cross-border data transfers and to de-velop meaningful rules to address restrictions on digital trade.

• Hold Officials Accountable for Abuses. The Administration should use the powers granted in Executive Order 13818 to hold accountable individuals complicit in ‘‘serious human rights abuse and corruption’’ in China and also use the list-based sanctions available in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Global Magnitsky) (Public Law No. 114–328), the Inter-national Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.) and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2000 (Public Law No. 106–113) to levy financial sanctions or deny U.S. entry visas to Chinese officials complicit in torture and arbitrary detentions; severe religious freedom restrictions; and forced abortions, steri-lizations, or human trafficking, including human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal.

• Condition Law Enforcement Cooperation. The U.S. Gov-ernment should stop all cooperation on the extradition of Chinese nationals who have fled to avoid pending corruption charges until a law enforcement agreement can be signed that guarantees verifiable due process protections and an end to torture in deten-tion and all forms of arbitrary detention, including the Chinese


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Communist Party’s and National Supervisory Commission’s extrajudicial forms of detention called shuanggui and liuzhi, re-spectively, and Chinese public security officials’ use of ‘‘residential surveillance at a designated location.’’

• Promote Internet Freedom and Counter Foreign Disinformation. The Administration should view ideological com-petition as a critical strategic challenge as the Chinese government has intensified the use of disinformation, propaganda, economic in-timidation, and political influence operations to weaken commit-ments to universal human rights and promote the Chinese polit-ical-economic model globally. The Administration should develop a comprehensive interagency action plan to counter disinformation emanating from authoritarian countries, including by actively op-posing the Chinese government’s efforts to establish a new inter-national norm in ‘‘internet sovereignty,’’ expanding digital security training for civil society advocates, and prioritizing a robust inter-net freedom agenda that transparently uses congressionally-appro-priated funds to circumvent China’s ‘‘Great Firewall’’ and other ‘‘smart technologies’’ through the funding and wide distribution of effective technologies that provide the greatest possible access to the internet in China and globally. The Senate should move swiftly to consider the Administration’s choice as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors or BBG) and to work with the nominee to strengthen U.S. public di-plomacy efforts.

• Expand Vital Global Alliances. International responses to gross violations of human rights have the greatest impact when the United States exercises leadership. The Administration should de-velop a multilateral strategy on China with other countries, as the Chinese government has used multilateral institutions to under-mine human rights norms and close off discussion of its failures to uphold its international obligations. The Administration should also continue coordination with businesses and NGOs to develop unified messages about unfair industrial policies, digital protec-tionism, and about the harm to U.S. and global interests from leg-islation such as the PRC Law on the Management of Overseas Non-Governmental Organizations’ Activities in Mainland China, the PRC Cybersecurity Law, and the recently revised Regulations on Religious Affairs.

• Help Address the ‘‘Missing Girl’’ Problem. The Adminis-tration should integrate the provisions of the Girls Count Act (Pub-lic Law No. 114–24) into foreign assistance programs to help ad-dress the social and economic issues created by the Chinese govern-ment’s population control policies. In addition, Congress should continue to link U.S. contributions to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) for use in China with the end of all birth limitation and coercive population control policies in China.

• Prioritize Religious Freedom Diplomacy. Religious groups continue to be the largest segment of China’s civil society and there is academic research that shows that countries respecting and pro-tecting religious freedom are often more politically stable, pros-perous, and suffer from fewer incidents of domestic terrorism. Therefore, the U.S. and China share mutual interests in advancing this fundamental freedom. The Administration should issue a pres-


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idential policy directive to implement a global strategy on inter-national religious freedom reflecting the priority placed on this issue in the ‘‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America.’’ The Administration should use all the tools available in the International Religious Freedom Act (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.) and the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (Public Law No. 114–281) to make targeted responses to escalating reli-gious freedom abuses in China and hold officials accountable for abuses.

• Address Abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Re-gion (XUAR). In addition to employing Global Magnitsky sanc-tions targeting officials responsible for or complicit in the mass de-tentions, severe religious restrictions, and intrusive surveillance targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minority Muslims in the XUAR, the Administration should consider initiating a joint state-ment with other nations at the UN Human Rights Council or, if appropriate, consider requesting an open debate or briefing at the UN Security Council. The Administration should calibrate the na-ture and scope of its counterterrorism and law enforcement co-operation and, through the Office of the Director of National Intel-ligence and the Justice Department, create guidelines for such co-operation to ensure that the United States does not condone or as-sist in Chinese authorities’ crackdown on domestic political dissent or restrictions on the freedoms of expression or religion.

• Revamp Export Controls. The Administration should con-sider restarting an interagency process to determine if new tech-nologies should be added to the United States Munitions List (USML) at the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), because of their ability to enhance surveillance and the ability of security forces to repress universally recognized human rights. Additionally, the End-User Review Committee (ERC), composed of representatives of the Departments of Com-merce, State, Defense, Energy and, where appropriate, the Treas-ury, should add XUAR police and government entities to the ‘‘Enti-ty List’’ of prohibited end-users and the Commerce Department Bu-reau of Industry and Security should increase scrutiny of any pur-chase of technology or equipment that may expand efforts to deny the right to life, liberty, or the security of person of ethnic minority populations in the XUAR.

• Reiterate U.S. Interest in Hong Kong’s Autonomy. The Administration should continue to issue annually the report out-lined in Section 301 of the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 (Public Law No. 102–383), subject to congressional directives, and provide clear assessments of the overall trajectory in Hong Kong, as understanding threats to the city’s autonomy and the rule of law are critical for appraising whether the special status granted to Hong Kong under U.S. law is warranted. Members of the Admin-istration and Congress should express through public statements, official visits, and resolutions the important connection between a free press, a vibrant civil society, an independent judiciary, and ex-panded democratic governance in Hong Kong and the mutual inter-ests shared by the United States and China in maintaining Hong Kong as a center of business and finance in Asia.


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• Expand Mandate of Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The Administration and Congress should work together to expand the mandate of FARA to encompass individuals working for foreign state-owned media and government-backed or Party-affili-ated think tanks or non-profit organizations operating in the United States. Congress should consider legislation that increases reporting requirements for universities and other NGOs that re-ceive financial or in-kind contributions from entities affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party or government.

• Protect Civil Society From Political Influence Oper-ations. The Administration should work with U.S. businesses, non- governmental organizations, and academic institutions to formulate a code of conduct for interacting with Chinese government-affili-ated entities to counter influence operations that are manipulative, coercive, or corrupting of democratic institutions, and to help pro-tect human rights and academic freedom. In addition, the State De-partment should collect and disseminate information about best practices for monitoring and controlling foreign influence oper-ations and provide information about the Chinese ministries, enti-ties, and individuals engaged in foreign influence operations and their connections with agencies of the Chinese Communist Party or government. As the Administration develops new strategies to deal with existing threats, new messaging and policies should also be created to avoid fostering an atmosphere of suspicion of Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals living and studying in the United States, as they are potentially victims and targets of influence op-erations.

• Promote Dialogue Regarding Tibet. The Administration and Congress should work together to press for unrestricted access to Tibetan autonomous areas in China, facilitate the full implemen-tation of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (Public Law No. 107–228), and urge renewed dialogue between Chinese government officials and the Dalai Lama’s representatives. Administration officials, in-cluding the President, should meet with the Dalai Lama in his ca-pacity as a spiritual leader, and with the leaders of the Central Ti-betan Administration.

• Congressional Action To ‘‘Raise Our Competitive Game.’’ As part of the Administration’s efforts to ‘‘raise our competitive game’’ in the face of challenges by a growing global authoritarianism, the Congress should be seeking to provide new authorities, resources, and ideas to counter China’s mercantilist economic policies and Belt and Road Initiative; harden America’s abilities to counter disinformation and political subversion; prioritize internet freedom, digital security, and circumvention of China’s ‘‘Great Firewall’’; and place reciprocity at the core of U.S. diplomatic engagement with China, including by considering pas-sage of the Fair Trade with China Enforcement Act (S. 2826/H.R. 6001, 115th Cong., 2nd Sess.); the National Economic Security Strategy Act of 2018 (S. 2757, 115th Cong., 2nd Sess.); the Coun-tering the Chinese Government and Communist Party’s Political Influence Operations Act (H.R. 6010/S. 3171, 115th Cong., 2nd Sess.); the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2017 (S. 417/H.R. 3856, 115th Cong., 1st Sess.); the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act (S. 821/H.R.1872, 115th Cong., 1st Sess.); and the Stop


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Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act (S. 2903, 115th Cong., 2nd Sess.).

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The Commission’s Executive Branch members have participated in and supported the work of the Commission. The content of this Annual Report, including its findings, views, legal determinations, and recommendations, does not necessarily reflect the views of indi-vidual Executive Branch members or the policies of the Administra-tion.

The Commission adopted this report by a vote of 15 to 0.†

† Voted to adopt: Senators Rubio, Lankford, Cotton, Daines, Young, Feinstein, Merkley, Peters, and King; Representatives Smith, Pittenger, Hultgren, Kaptur, Walz, and Lieu.


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POLITICAL PRISONER DATABASE

Recommendations

When composing correspondence advocating on behalf of a polit-ical or religious prisoner, or preparing for official travel to China, Members of Congress and Administration officials are encouraged to:

Æ Check the Political Prisoner Database (PPD) (http:// ppdcecc.gov) for reliable, up-to-date information on a prisoner or groups of prisoners. Consult a prisoner’s database record for more detailed information about the prisoner’s case, including his or her alleged crime, specific human rights that officials have violated, stage in the legal process, and location of deten-tion or imprisonment, if known. Æ Advise official and private delegations traveling to China to present Chinese officials with lists of political and religious prisoners compiled from database records. Æ Urge U.S. state and local officials and private citizens in-volved in sister-state and sister-city relationships with China to explore the database, and to advocate for the release of po-litical and religious prisoners in China.

A POWERFUL RESOURCE FOR ADVOCACY

The Commission’s 2018 Annual Report provides information about Chinese political and religious prisoners1 in the context of specific human rights and rule-of-law abuses. Many of the abuses result from the Chinese Communist Party and government’s appli-cation of policies and laws. The Commission relies on the Political Prisoner Database (PPD), a publicly available online database maintained by the Commission, for its own advocacy and research work, including the preparation of the Annual Report, and rou-tinely uses the database to prepare summaries of information about political and religious prisoners for Members of Congress and Administration officials. The Commission invites the public to read about issue-specific Chinese political imprisonment in sections of this Annual Report, and to access and make use of the PPD at http://ppdcecc.gov. (Information about the PPD is available at https://www.cecc.gov/resources/political-prisoner-database.)

The PPD received approximately 502,900 online requests for prisoner information during the 12-month period ending July 31, 2018—a change of approximately 27.96 percent over the 393,000 requests reported in the Commission’s 2017 Annual Report for the 12-month period ending July 31, 2017.2 During the 12-month pe-riod ending in July 2018, the United States remained the country of origin for the largest share of requests for information, with ap-proximately 23.7 percent of such requests. India was in the second position, with approximately 5.9 percent of such requests, followed by France (3.3 percent), Brazil (3.0 percent), China (2.8 percent), Japan (2.8 percent), the Philippines (2.7 percent), Italy (2.6 per-cent), Germany (2.6 percent), the United Kingdom (2.1 percent), and Hong Kong (2.0 percent).

Internet Protocol addresses that do not provide information about the name of the registrant or the type of domain were the


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source of the largest share of online requests for information dur-ing the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, accounting for approxi-mately 37.0 percent of the 502,900 requests for information in the 12-month period ending in July 2018. The approximate number of requests from other sources are as follows: Domains ending in .net were second, with 15.5 percent of requests for PPD information. Domains ending in .com were third, with 15.4 percent of online re-quests for information, followed by Brazil (.br) with 2.7 percent, then by domains for Italy (.it), India (.in), and Japan (.jp) with 2.2 percent each, for Germany (.de) with 1.9 percent, for France (.fr) with 1.5 percent, for Poland (.pl) with 1.1 percent, for the European Union (.eu) with 1.0 percent, and Australia (.au) with 0.9 percent. U.S. Government (.gov) domains accounted for 0.7 percent of re-quests for information, educational domains ending in .edu with 0.2 percent, and domains ending in .org with 0.1 percent of requests. Domains for China (.cn) accounted for 0.1 percent of such requests.

POLITICAL PRISONERS

The PPD seeks to provide users with prisoner information that is reliable and up-to-date. Commission staff members work to maintain and update political prisoner records based on the staff member’s area of expertise. Staff seek to provide objective analysis of information about individual prisoners, and about events and trends that drive political and religious imprisonment in China.

As of September 1, 2018, the PPD contained information on 9,345 cases of political or religious imprisonment in China. Of those, 1,392 are cases of political and religious prisoners currently known or believed to be detained or imprisoned, and 7,953 are cases of prisoners who are known or believed to have been re-leased, who were executed, who died while imprisoned or soon after release, or who escaped. The Commission notes that there are con-siderably more than 1,392 cases of current political and religious imprisonment in China. Commission staff work on an ongoing basis to add cases of political and religious imprisonment to the PPD.

The Dui Hua Foundation, based in San Francisco, and the former Tibet Information Network, based in London, shared their extensive experience and data on political and religious prisoners in China with the Commission to help establish the database. The Dui Hua Foundation continues to do so. The Commission also relies on its own staff research for prisoner information, as well as on in-formation provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other groups that specialize in promoting human rights and oppos-ing political and religious imprisonment, and other public sources of information.

MORE POWERFUL DATABASE TECHNOLOGY

The PPD has served since its launch in November 2004 as a unique and powerful resource for the U.S. Congress and Adminis-tration, other governments, NGOs, educational institutions, and in-dividuals who research political and religious imprisonment in China, or who advocate on behalf of such prisoners. The July 2010 PPD upgrade significantly leveraged the capacity of the Commis-sion’s information and technology resources to support such re-search, reporting, and advocacy.


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In 2015, the Commission enhanced the functionality of the PPD to empower the Commission, the U.S. Congress and Administra-tion, other governments, NGOs, and individuals to strengthen re-porting on political and religious imprisonment in China and advo-cacy undertaken on behalf of Chinese political prisoners. The up-grade allows the PPD full text search and the basic search both to provide an option to return only records that either include or do not include an image of the prisoner. In addition, the 2015 en-hancement allowed PPD record short summaries to accommodate more text as well as greater capacity to link to external websites.

The PPD aims to provide a technology with sufficient power to handle the scope and complexity of political imprisonment in China. The most important feature of the PPD is that it is struc-tured as a genuine database and uses a powerful query engine. Each prisoner’s record describes the type of human rights violation by Chinese authorities that led to his or her detention. These types include violations of the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of reli-gion, freedom of association, and freedom of expression, including the freedom to advocate peaceful social or political change and to criticize government policy or government officials.

The design of the PPD allows anyone with access to the internet to query the database and download prisoner data without pro-viding personal information to the Commission, and without the PPD downloading any software or Web cookies to a user’s com-puter. Users have the option to create a user account, which allows them to save, edit, and reuse queries, but the PPD does not require a user to provide any personal information to set up such an ac-count. The PPD does not download software or a Web cookie to a user’s computer as the result of setting up such an account. Saved queries are not stored on a user’s computer. A user-specified ID (which can be a nickname) and password are the only information required to set up a user account.

Notes to Section I—Political Prisoner Database 1 The Commission treats as a political prisoner an individual detained or imprisoned for exer-

cising his or her human rights under international law, such as peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of expression, including the freedom to advocate peaceful social or political change, and to criticize government policy or government officials. (This list is illustrative, not exhaustive.) In most cases, prisoners in the PPD were detained or imprisoned for attempting to exercise rights guaranteed to them by China’s Constitution and law, or by international law, or both. Chinese security, prosecution, and judicial officials some-times seek to distract attention from the political or religious nature of imprisonment by con-victing a de facto political or religious prisoner under the pretext of having committed a generic crime. In such cases, defendants typically deny guilt but officials may attempt to coerce confes-sions using torture and other forms of abuse, and standards of evidence are poor. If authorities permit a defendant to entrust someone to provide him or her legal counsel and defense, as the PRC Criminal Procedure Law guarantees in Article 32, officials may deny the counsel adequate access to the defendant, restrict or deny the counsel’s access to evidence, and not provide the counsel adequate time to prepare a defense.

2 CECC, 2017 Annual Report, 5 October 17, 63.


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SPECIFIC FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A summary of specific findings follows below for each section of this Annual Report, covering each area that the Commission mon-itors. In each area, the Commission has identified a set of issues that merit attention over the next year, and, in accordance with the Commission’s legislative mandate, submits for each a set of rec-ommendations to the President and the Congress for legislative or executive action.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Findings

• In March 2018, the Chinese Communist Party Central Com-mittee issued a large-scale plan to restructure the functional authority and managerial responsibilities of Party entities and Chinese government agencies, provisions of which reinforced the Party’s ideological control by assigning to the Party Cen-tral Propaganda Department functional control of the press, publishing, and film. The plan also brought together China’s three major broadcast news entities—China Central Television, China National Radio, and China Radio International—under a newly formed ‘‘mega’’ agency called China Media Group, to be known as Voice of China internationally. • International press freedom advocacy organizations again ranked China as among the most restrictive for press freedoms throughout the world. The Chinese government continued to be one of the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with esti-mates of individuals in detention or imprisoned ranging from 41 to more than 50. Authorities detained and held a closed trial for Zhen Jianghua, the executive director of human rights monitoring website Human Rights Campaign in China. Other citizen journalists in detention included Huang Qi, Jiang Chengfen, Wang Jing, Chen Tianmao, and Yang Xiuqiong of the website 64 Tianwang, and Liu Feiyue and Ding Lingjie of the website Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch. • Working conditions for foreign reporters in China generally deteriorated in 2017, according to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC). An FCCC survey noted official harass-ment of foreign reporters, news assistants, and sources; at-tempts to interfere with the coverage of issues that authorities deemed ‘‘sensitive’’; restrictions on travel to areas along Chi-na’s border and ethnic minority autonomous regions; and visa renewal delays and denials. Chinese officials rejected the FCCC survey findings, with one who questioned the legitimacy of the FCCC by alleging it is an ‘‘unregistered, illegal organiza-tion.’’ • This past year, authorities continued to formulate new regu-lations to control and censor online news and media outlets, technology companies, and users of social media, and in the process, operationalize the PRC Cybersecurity Law. • The Commission observed reports about censorship of topics relating to areas with large ethnic minority populations, such as the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uyghur Au-


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tonomous Region; Taiwan and Hong Kong; the spiritual move-ment Falun Gong; and anniversaries of past events and per-sons. Censorship of the news and social media commentary on the news was particularly intense this reporting year in con-nection with two major political events—the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017 and the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and its advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Con-ference, in March 2018. • Despite heavy and pervasive censorship, social media plat-forms continued to be an everyday channel of expression for Chinese citizens to discuss concerns about a range of news events and public interest issues. This past year, these con-cerns included sexual harassment on Chinese university cam-puses; racism on television; the forced eviction of thousands of non-local residents from Beijing municipality; and the removal of presidential term limits from China’s Constitution, with many posts in protest of Chinese President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power. • The Commission observed a wide range of cases that illus-trated the Chinese government and Communist Party’s viola-tions of international human rights standards and provisions in China’s Constitution on the right to freedom of expression, such as preventing author Jia Pingwa from traveling to an international literary scholarship conference in New York City in January 2018; detentions—and arrest in the case of Guo Qingjun—of administrators of a social media group who pro-vided humanitarian assistance to the families of political pris-oners; the announcement of a five-year prison sentence for Ti-betan language rights advocate Tashi Wangchug; and the death of writer and democracy advocate Yang Tongyan (pen name Yang Tianshui) while on medical parole. Although the Chinese government permitted Liu Xia, the widow of writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to travel to Ger-many in July 2018 after holding her in arbitrary detention for nearly eight years, rights advocates raised concerns that her freedom of speech would be compromised since the Chinese government did not allow her brother Liu Hui to leave China with her.

Recommendations

Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials are encouraged to:

Æ Give greater public expression, including at the highest lev-els of the U.S. Government, to the issue of press freedom in China, condemning the harassment and detention of both do-mestic and foreign journalists; the denial, threat of denial, or delay of visas for foreign journalists; and the censoring or blockage of foreign media websites. Consistently link press freedoms to U.S. interests, noting how censorship and restric-tions on journalists and media websites prevent the free flow of information on issues of public concern, including public health and environmental crises, food safety problems, and cor-


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ruption, and act as a trade barrier for foreign media and com-panies attempting to access the Chinese market. Raise these issues with Chinese officials during bilateral dialogues. Assess the extent to which China’s treatment of foreign journalists contravenes its World Trade Organization or other obligations. Æ Sustain, and where appropriate expand, programs that de-velop and widely distribute technologies that will assist Chi-nese human rights advocates and civil society organizations in circumventing internet restrictions, in order to access and share content protected under international human rights standards. Continue to maintain internet freedom programs for China at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors) to provide digital security training and capacity-building ef-forts for bloggers, journalists, civil society organizations, and human rights and internet freedom advocates in China. Æ Raise with Chinese officials, during all appropriate bilateral discussions, the costs to U.S.-China relations and to the Chi-nese public’s confidence in government institutions that are in-curred when the Chinese government restricts political debate, advocacy for democracy or human rights, and other forms of peaceful political expression. Emphasize that such restrictions violate international standards for the restrictions on free ex-pression, particularly those contained in Article 19 of the Inter-national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Emphasize that such restrictions erode confidence in media and government in-stitutions. Submit questions for China’s next UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review in November 2018, asking China to explain what steps it will take to ensure its restrictions on free expression conform to international stand-ards. Æ Urge Chinese officials to end unlawful detention and official harassment of Chinese rights advocates, lawyers, and journal-ists subject to reprisal for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Call on officials to release or confirm the release of individuals detained or imprisoned for exercising freedom of expression, such as Zhen Jianghua, Liu Feiyue, Huang Qi, Ding Lingjie, Jiang Chengfen, Wang Jing, Chen Tianmao, Yang Xiuqiong, Guo Qingjun, Tashi Wangchug, and other polit-ical prisoners raised in this report and in the Commission’s Po-litical Prisoner Database. Raise this issue in bilateral dialogues as well as through multilateral institutions, such as at China’s UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review sched-uled to take place in November 2018, and at the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

WORKER RIGHTS

Findings

• The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) remains the only trade union organization permitted under Chinese law. In January 2018, the state-run news agency Xinhua re-ported that the ACFTU had 303 million members in 2017. The


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U.S. Government and international observers noted that the ACFTU typically prioritized Chinese Communist Party inter-ests over the interests of workers and did not effectively rep-resent workers. • Workers’ right to collective bargaining remained limited in law and in practice. Observers noted the need for workers to establish trade unions that are truly independent from govern-ment and enterprise interests. In addition to curbing effective union representation, authorities have also restricted the abil-ity of Chinese labor non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to train workers in collective bargaining. • During this reporting year, Chinese authorities continued to severely restrict the ability of civil society organizations to work on labor issues, including domestic organizations that re-ceived foreign funding and international civil society organiza-tions. The situation for civil society organizations has not im-proved since a crackdown on labor NGOs began in December 2015, and has deteriorated further during the first year of im-plementation of the PRC Law on the Management of Overseas NGOs’ Activities in Mainland China. • The Chinese government did not publicly report on the num-ber of worker strikes and protests, and NGOs and citizen jour-nalists continued to face difficulties in obtaining comprehen-sive information on worker actions. The Hong Kong-based NGO China Labour Bulletin (CLB), which compiles data on worker actions collected from traditional news and social media, recorded 1,257 strikes in 2017. The CLB communica-tions director estimated that CLB was able to document be-tween 5 and 10 percent of the total number of worker actions in China between 2013 and 2017. • Major worker actions were reported, including in March 2018, when an estimated 3,000 sanitation workers protested wage cuts in Changning district, Shanghai municipality. Also in March 2018, 6,000 workers from five factories in Zhuhai municipality, Guangdong province, protested a plan to sell the factories. In April 2018, crane operators went on strike across 19 provinces in China to protest low pay. • Against the backdrop of the ongoing, and in some sectors worsening, problem of wage arrears this past year, central au-thorities reiterated goals from 2016 to resolve the problem of migrant worker wage arrears. In December 2017, the State Council General Office released new measures on wage ar-rears, reiterating the goal of a 2016 State Council opinion to resolve the issue. • During this reporting year, government data showed a con-tinued decline in workplace deaths, though the Commission continued to observe reports of lax enforcement of work safety laws and regulations. According to the National Bureau of Sta-tistics of China, in 2017, a total of 37,852 people died in work-place accidents, down from 43,062 deaths in 2016, and 66,182 deaths in 2015. Coal mine deaths have reportedly declined steadily and significantly over the past fifteen years, down to 375 in 2017, compared to 7,000 in 2002.


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• In March 2018, as part of a sweeping government restruc-turing plan, central authorities announced plans to dismantle the State Administration of Work Safety, transferring responsi-bility for work safety to a new Ministry of Emergency Manage-ment. CLB criticized the bureaucratic changes as highlighting how ‘‘the Chinese government is more concerned with disaster management and control rather than in preventing workplace accidents in the first place.’’

Recommendations


Æ Press the Chinese government to immediately release labor advocates who are in prison or detention for the exercise of their lawful rights. Specifically raise the cases of Lu Yuyu and Fu Tianbo. Æ Call on the Chinese government to respect internationally recognized rights to freedom of association and collective bar-gaining, and allow workers to organize and establish inde-pendent labor unions. Raise concern in all appropriate trade negotiations and bilateral and multilateral dialogues about the Chinese Communist Party’s role in collective bargaining and elections of trade union representatives, emphasizing that in a market economy wage rates should be determined by free bar-gaining between labor and management. Æ Promote and support bilateral and multilateral exchanges among government officials, academics, legal experts, and civil society groups to focus on labor issues such as freedom of ex-pression, collective bargaining, employment discrimination, and occupational health and safety. Seek opportunities to sup-port capacity-building programs to strengthen Chinese labor and legal aid organizations involved in defending the rights of workers. Æ When appropriate, integrate meaningful civil society partici-pation into bilateral and multilateral dialogues, meetings, and exchanges. Invite international unions and labor NGOs as well as domestic civil society groups from all participating countries to observe relevant government-to-government dialogues. Æ Support China’s increased engagement and cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO) through funding for ILO technical cooperation projects with China. Request that the ILO increase its work with China on observing core labor standards, including freedom of association and the right to or-ganize.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, authorities continued to use various forms of arbitrary detention—such as extralegal ‘‘black jails’’ and forced psychiatric commitment of individuals without mental illness—to deprive individuals of their liberty, contravening international human rights stand-


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ards. Authorities also continued to use administrative forms of detention that circumvented judicial oversight and protections for detainees’ rights under the PRC Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). • In March 2018, the National People’s Congress passed the PRC Supervision Law, authorizing the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) to investigate suspected official misconduct using methods including ‘‘confinement’’ (liuzhi), an extrajudicial form of detention that allows NSC officials to hold individuals without a guarantee of access to counsel. In May 2018, the first reported death in ‘‘confinement’’ occurred, that of Chen Yong. Chen’s body reportedly showed signs of abuse, and officials said Chen ‘‘collapsed’’ during interrogation but did not specify a cause of death. • Authorities continued to detain individuals under broad pro-visions in the PRC Criminal Law—such as crimes of ‘‘endan-gering state security’’ and ‘‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’’—to suppress rights advocacy and other activities pro-tected under international human rights standards. • Authorities continued to abuse detainees’ rights under the CPL. Some detainees gave what appeared to be scripted, co-erced confessions, in some cases on camera. For example, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai gave a televised confession for al-legedly cooperating with Swedish authorities to attempt to leave China, after Chinese authorities detained him as he trav-eled to Beijing municipality with Swedish diplomats for a med-ical exam. In another case, Taiwan college employee and non- governmental organization (NGO) volunteer Lee Ming-cheh gave what appeared to be a coerced confession in court for ‘‘subversion of state power.’’ Officials denied some detainees ac-cess to counsel, such as human rights website editor Ding Lingjie and internet commentator Chen Jieren. • Authorities held some rights advocates, lawyers, petitioners, and others in prolonged pretrial detention, including under ‘‘residential surveillance at a designated location’’ (RSDL), a form of incommunicado detention that can last up to six months, restricts access to counsel, and places detainees at risk of abuse by authorities. Observers reportedly were unable to contact rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang since authorities de-tained him on July 10, 2015. Wang’s wife reported in July 2018 that another lawyer reported seeing Wang in a Tianjin munici-pality detention center. Authorities reportedly postponed the June 20, 2018, trial of 64 Tianwang website founder Huang Qi, whom authorities detained on November 28, 2016. According to an August 18, 2018, Radio Free Asia report, authorities had not set a new trial date. Authorities also placed rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and environmental petitioner Ji Shulong under RSDL. • Authorities continued to torture and otherwise abuse detain-ees in some cases. Officials in Shenyang municipality, Liaoning province, reportedly detained rights lawyer Li Yuhan and al-lowed other detainees to throw her food on the floor, urinate on her food, and throw cold water on her. Officials in Yu coun-ty, Zhangjiakou municipality, Hebei province, reportedly placed


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a hood over lawyer Wu Quan; took him to a basement; bound him to an interrogation chair for 48 hours; and deprived him of water, sleep, and sufficient clothing for the first 24 hours. • Authorities continued to develop technology-based means to help public security officials track persons of interest—based in part on large-scale, sometimes involuntary collection of per-sonal data—raising concerns about privacy and public security officials’ capacity to crack down on rights advocates and other targeted persons. The manner in which authorities collected personal data, including biometric data, appeared to violate privacy protections in international human rights instruments, and the Commission did not observe any efforts by the Chinese government to bring the collection or use of such information in line with international standards. • The Chinese government continued to claim that it reserved the death penalty for a small number of crimes and only the most serious offenders, while Amnesty International estimated that China carried out more executions than all other countries combined. China continued to classify statistics on its use of the death penalty as a state secret, and the Commission did not observe official reports on overall death penalty numbers. In December 2017, authorities in Lufeng city, Shanwei munici-pality, Guangdong province, sentenced to death 10 people var-iously for murder, robbery, and drug-related crimes—in a pub-lic trial in a stadium—and then immediately executed them. This past year, the Commission did not observe any rule-making efforts to ban harvesting organs from executed pris-oners. At a trafficking conference at the Vatican in 2018, the head of the China Organ Transplant Response System re-ported that authorities made 220 arrests over the previous 10 years in connection to illegal organ transplants and noted that authorities continued to combat the practice.

Recommendations


Æ Call on the Chinese government to publicly commit to a spe-cific timetable for ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Chinese government signed in 1998 but has not yet ratified. Æ Include discussion of rights protections for government crit-ics and rights advocates in a wide range of bilateral and multi-lateral discussions with Chinese officials. Stress to the Chinese government the importance of procedural compliance and effec-tive legal representation in criminal cases in relation to the goal of rule-based governance. Publicly convey support for human rights advocates whom officials have deprived of liberty on unsubstantiated criminal charges and for apparent political or religious reasons. Æ Urge Chinese officials to end all forms of arbitrary deten-tion, as well as forms of extrajudicial detention that are im-posed without meeting the standards for a fair trial as set


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forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international human rights instruments. Æ Consult with Chinese officials regarding progress toward adopting the recommendations made in February 2016 by the UN Committee against Torture in relation to China’s compli-ance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, In-human or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, such as the call to repeal the provisions in Chinese law allowing for ‘‘resi-dential surveillance at a designated location.’’ Further, encour-age Chinese officials to extend invitations to all UN special rapporteurs and other special procedures that have requested visits to China. Æ Urge Chinese officials to adopt a legal and regulatory frame-work for information technology-based policing practices that meets international human rights standards. Such a frame-work should include, for example, privacy protections, restric-tions on police authority to collect personal information with-out consent, and protections against discriminatory practices, including profiling of ethnic and religious minorities. Encour-age Chinese officials to require police who use information technology to complete appropriate human rights training, and impose strict penalties for officials who authorize or carry out preemptive detentions. Æ Stress to the Chinese government the need for greater trans-parency on the number and circumstances of executions, and urge Chinese officials to further limit the crimes for which the death penalty is applicable. Urge the Chinese government to ban explicitly in national legislation the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners. Æ Continue and, where appropriate, expand support for pro-grams involving U.S. entities engaging with reform-minded Chinese organizations and individuals (both within and outside the government) that draw on comparative experience to im-prove the criminal justice process. For example, the experience of the United States and other jurisdictions can inform China as it charts a path toward reducing reliance on confessions, en-hancing the role of witnesses at trials, and creating more reli-able procedures for reviewing death penalty cases.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Findings

• Both Chinese and international law provide guarantees of religious freedom. Despite these guarantees, the Commission continued to observe widespread and systematic violation of the principles of religious freedom, as Chinese authorities exer-cised broad discretion over the religious practice of Chinese citizens. • The importance of ‘‘religious work’’ to the Chinese Com-munist Party agenda has undergone an ‘‘unprecedented in-crease’’ with ‘‘major innovations’’ under Party General Sec-retary Xi Jinping. Party and government officials continued to emphasize several key policy principles in religious affairs dur-ing this reporting year. These included ‘‘guiding’’ religious


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groups to support Party leadership and the political system; shaping religious practice in China to promote and assimilate to a Chinese cultural identity (‘‘sinicization’’); and using Chi-nese religious groups to facilitate connections with other coun-tries, particularly those hosting Belt and Road Initiative projects. • In March 2018, the Party’s sweeping reorganization plan for Party and government institutions included a provision direct-ing the Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) to take over the government agency responsible for religious af-fairs at the national level, making the national-level UFWD di-rectly responsible for administering policies pertaining to reli-gion in China. • The Chinese government’s regulatory framework for religion imposed increased restrictions on religious freedom after revi-sions to the Regulations on Religious Affairs took effect on Feb-ruary 1, 2018. The revisions increased official control and scru-tiny over religious activity. The revisions also established new legal responsibilities and penalties for violations of the regula-tions. Religious believers and academic experts predicted that the restrictions would increase official pressure on religious groups, particularly those not registered with the government. Many groups refuse to register because registration requires submitting to the direction of a state-sanctioned patriotic reli-gious association. Other laws and Party policies also continued to restrict citizens’ freedom to hold religious beliefs and prac-tice religion. • While government and Party officials rarely targeted Chi-nese Buddhist and Taoist communities with direct suppression, they nonetheless continued to subject these religions to exten-sive regulation and control. Official regulation also included re-strictions aimed at stemming the perception of commercializa-tion of Buddhist and Taoist religious practices. • The government maintained measures that impede the free-dom of Chinese Catholic congregations to be led by clergy who are selected and who conduct their ministry according to the standards called for by Catholic religious beliefs. The govern-ment also continued to harass, detain, or hold incommunicado certain leading Catholic clergy. In May 2018, the national reli-gious organizations for Catholics passed a five-year plan for the ‘‘sinicization’’ of Catholicism in China. • Party and government officials maintained restrictions on the religious activities of Chinese Protestants, with some be-lievers facing harassment, surveillance, detention, imprison-ment, and other abuse because of their religious activities. A U.S.-based organization that advocates for religious freedom, ChinaAid Association, reported that both instances of official persecution and the number of believers affected had increased in 2017 from the prior year. Academic experts on Chinese reli-gion and society stated that the continued escalation of repres-sion was due in part to Party officials’ concern that Christian communities pose a challenge to the Party’s monopoly on polit-ical power. In several instances, authorities detained house church members on the charge of ‘‘organizing and using a cult


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to undermine implementation of the law’’ under Article 300 of the PRC Criminal Law. • The Commission noted reports of continued repression of Falun Gong practitioners, by means of harassment, arbitrary detention, and prosecution. International organizations contin-ued to express concern over reports that organs of detained prisoners have been used in numerous organ transplant oper-ations in China, including those of Falun Gong practitioners. Medical professionals and international advocacy organizations disputed Chinese health officials’ claims that organ procure-ment systems have been reformed in compliance with inter-national standards, citing ethical concerns about organ sourcing raised by short wait times for organ transplants and discrepancies in data on organ transplants. • During this reporting year, official restrictions on the reli-gious freedom of Hui Muslim believers increased. The local government in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a region in which Hui Muslims are concentrated, launched a ‘‘rectification campaign’’ that included the removal of ‘‘Arabic style’’ domes and decor from mosques and other buildings, prohibitions on calls to prayer, removal of the Quran and books on Islam from retail shops, and the closure of schools teaching Arabic. Hui Muslim believers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have also been sentenced for ‘‘cult’’ or other offenses for ‘‘pri-vately preaching the Quran.’’ • Religious communities outside of the five religions that are the main objects of official regulation continued to exist in China, with some continuing to enjoy tacit recognition and sup-port, while others faced suppression from authorities.

Recommendations


Æ Call on the Chinese government to guarantee to all citizens freedom of religion in accordance with its international human rights obligations. Stress to Chinese authorities that freedom of religion includes the right to freely adopt beliefs and practice religious activities without government interference, particu-larly those based on political goals. Æ Stress to the Chinese government that the right to freedom of religion includes: the right of Buddhists and Taoists to carry out activities in temples and select monastic teachers inde-pendent of state controls; the right of Catholics to be led by clergy who are selected and who conduct their ministry accord-ing to the standard called for by Catholic religious beliefs; the right of Falun Gong practitioners to freely practice Falun Gong inside China; the right of Muslims to freely preach, undertake overseas pilgrimage, select and train religious leaders, and wear clothing with religious significance; the right of Protes-tants to exercise their faith free from state controls over doc-trine and worship, and free from harassment, detention, and other abuses for public and private manifestations of their faith, including the display of crosses; and the right of mem-


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bers of other religious communities to be free from state con-trol and harassment. Æ Call for the release of persons confined, detained, or impris-oned for peacefully pursuing their religious beliefs, as well as those confined, detained, or imprisoned in connection to their association with them. The Administration should use existing laws to hold accountable Chinese government officials and oth-ers complicit in severe religious freedom restrictions, including by using the sanctions available in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Public Law No. 114–328) and the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Ensure that conditions related to religious freedom are taken into ac-count when negotiating any applicable trade agreement as mandated by the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (Public Law No. 114–26). Æ Publicly and privately advocate on behalf of persons whom Chinese authorities continue to severely harass or have de-tained for exercising their freedom of religion or belief. Some of the many cases in need of legal, humanitarian, and other forms of advocacy include Catholic clergy pressured by Chinese authorities to join the Catholic Patriotic Association, such as Coadjutor Bishop Augustine Cui Tai of Xuanhua district, Zhangjiakou municipality, Hebei province; Bishop James Su Zhimin of Baoding municipality, Hebei province; Father Lu Danhua of Qingtian county, Zhejiang province; and Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin of Shanghai municipality, whose move-ment reportedly remains restricted within Sheshan Seminary in Shanghai. A number of leaders of officially sanctioned Protestant groups have been prosecuted and sentenced after protesting official measures against their churches in recent years, including Zhang Shaojie of Nanle county, Puyang mu-nicipality, Henan province, as well as Bao Guohua and Xing Wenxiang, both of Jinhua municipality, Zhejiang province. Members of unofficial Protestant groups (‘‘house churches’’), in-cluding 27 Protestant believers across six different localities within Yunnan province, have received criminal sentences for ‘‘organizing and using a cult to undermine implementation of the law’’ under Article 300 of the PRC Criminal Law. The U.S.- based non-governmental organization Dui Hua Foundation re-portedly found 800 official records of persons sentenced in 2017 under Article 300 in Chinese judicial databases, a majority of whom apparently are Falun Gong practitioners. Representative cases of Falun Gong practitioners in the Commission’s Political Prisoner Database include Deng Cuiping of Yuxi municipality, Yunnan, who is currently serving a six-year prison sentence; Bian Lichao of Tangshan municipality, Hebei, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence; and Zhang Ming and Li Quanchen of Dandong municipality, Liaoning province. Members of Con-gress and Administration officials are encouraged to consult the Commission’s Political Prisoner Database for information on political and religious prisoners. Æ Encourage U.S. political leaders to visit religious sites in China to raise awareness of and promote freedom of religion.


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Executive Summary

ETHNIC MINORITY RIGHTS

Findings

• At the March 2018 meetings of the National People’s Con-gress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Con-ference in Beijing (Two Sessions), Chinese Communist Party and government authorities changed the mechanisms they use to implement policies toward ethnic minorities, as the Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) assumed control of the work of the government departments overseeing ethnic af-fairs (the State Ethnic Affairs Commission) and religion (the State Administration for Religious Affairs). A number of ob-servers expressed the view that the UFWD’s newly expanded powers represented an official move toward tighter Party con-trol over ethnic affairs and policies promoting ethnic assimila-tion over ethnic pluralism. • Authorities targeted ethnic Hui communities with policies and restrictions limiting Hui Muslims’ religious practices. Dur-ing the Two Sessions, Yang Faming, Chairman of the China Is-lamic Association, stressed that Muslims in China should in-corporate Chinese characteristics into Islamic religious rituals, culture, and architecture, avoid the expansion of the concept of ‘‘halal’’ into secular life, and adhere to ‘‘socialist core values.’’ According to an American historian, Yang’s speech reflected a formal declaration of a policy trend that officials had begun im-plementing in regions with significant Hui populations begin-ning in fall 2016. • Government and Party officials implemented policies lim-iting ethnic minorities’ freedom to engage in cultural practices and speak or learn their languages. In December 2017, inter-national media and rights advocates reported that in a policy implemented in September, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Re-gion (XUAR) education authorities had ended the use of Mon-golian as a language of instruction in elementary and lower middle schools in Bayangol (Bayinguoleng) Mongol Autono-mous Prefecture, XUAR. • Mongol herders in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) demonstrated and petitioned authorities over the gov-ernment’s role in the loss of their traditional grazing lands, the harmful ecological effect of state development on grassland and livestock, and the government’s failure to provide herders with adequate compensation for their land. As in past reporting years, authorities detained some of the Mongol herders who peacefully protested.

Recommendations


Æ Continue to build the capacity of Mongol, Uyghur, and Ti-betan groups working to advance human rights, environmental protection, economic development, and rule of law in China through U.S. foreign assistance funding and by encouraging


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Executive Summary

additional support from both UN and non-governmental sources. Æ Convey to the Chinese government the importance of re-specting and protecting ethnic minority cultures and lan-guages. Urge Chinese officials to provide ethnic minority stu-dents and parents a choice of what language or languages of instruction should be used at schools they attend in accordance with the PRC Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. Call on Chinese of-ficials to establish mechanisms that preserve and expand exist-ing instruction in ethnic minority languages from preschool through the university level. Æ Call on the Chinese government to allow Mongol herders to exercise their fundamental rights of freedom of expression, as-sociation, and peaceful assembly, as well as the right to be free from arbitrary detention. Convey to Chinese officials the im-portance of consulting with ethnic minority communities re-garding the impact of proposed development on their tradi-tional grazing lands. Æ Urge Chinese authorities to allow Hui and other predomi-nantly Muslim ethnic minority populations to freely engage in Islamic religious rituals, as a matter of the right of religious freedom, and in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as China’s Constitution, which pro-hibits discrimination based on religion.

POPULATION CONTROL

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, Chinese gov-ernment authorities continued to promote and implement coer-cive population control policies that violate international stand-ards, including the 1995 Beijing Declaration, the 1994 Pro-gramme of Action of the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, and the Convention against Tor-ture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The amended PRC Population and Family Plan-ning Law and provincial-level regulations limit couples’ free-dom to build their families as they see fit. • The Chinese Communist Party and government implemented the ‘‘universal two-child policy’’ for a third consecutive year in 2018, and government statistics showed that the policy was not effective in spurring population growth. The National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) reported that the number of total births in 2017 was 17.23 million, 630,000 less than the 2016 NBS figure. The National Health and Family Planning Com-mission (NHFPC) had predicted in 2016 that the universal two-child policy would result in 3 million additional births per year. • During this reporting year, central Party and government of-ficials pledged to strengthen supporting policies that facilitate implementation of family planning policies. Some local govern-


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ments introduced supporting policies—including longer paid maternity leave, financial incentives and subsidies, and other benefits—to encourage couples to have a second child. • During this reporting year, central authorities issued a plan to restructure Party and government agencies, including merg-ing the NHFPC and several other agencies to create a new Na-tional Health Commission (NHC) under the State Council. The NHC will assume oversight of responsibilities related to family planning management and services, in addition to managing an aging population and other health-related matters. Some observers saw the restructuring plan as an indication that au-thorities plan to eventually eliminate birth limit policies. Ex-perts from academic institutions affiliated with the Party and government, as well as a provincial government report on pop-ulation development, called for ending the birth limit policies. The NHC reportedly stated that authorities were considering ending the two-child birth limit. • According to a May 2018 Bloomberg News report, central government authorities reportedly were considering and may have reached a decision to end birth limit policies due to demo-graphic concerns, such as the declining birth rate, aging popu-lation, and shrinking workforce. The report also cited inter-national criticism of the policies as a factor in the decision. • The amended PRC Population and Family Planning Law contains provisions that prohibit officials from infringing upon the ‘‘legitimate rights and interests’’ of citizens while imple-menting family planning policies. Some provincial population planning regulations and local government authorities, how-ever, continued to explicitly instruct officials to carry out abor-tions, often referred to as ‘‘remedial measures,’’ for illegal preg-nancies. Local authorities continued to promote the implemen-tation of harsh and invasive family planning measures. Offi-cials imposed or threatened various punishments to enforce family planning policies, including heavy fines, job termi-nation, detention, and abortion. • Decades of population control policies have exacerbated Chi-na’s demographic challenges, which include a rapidly aging population, shrinking workforce, and sex ratio imbalance. Chi-na’s total fertility rate has dropped from approximately 3 births per woman in the late 1970s to an estimated 1.6 births per woman in 2017, below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman necessary to maintain a stable population. The Na-tional Bureau of Statistics of China reported that from 2016 to 2017, China’s working-age population (persons between the ages of 16 and 59) declined by 5.48 million people to 901.99 million, while the elderly population (persons aged 60 or older) increased by 10.04 million in 2017 to 240.90 million people, or 17.3 percent of the total population. The overall sex ratio in 2017 was 104.81 males to 100 females, and there were approxi-mately 32.66 million more males than females in China. • International media reports continued to suggest a link be-tween China’s sex ratio imbalance and the trafficking of for-eign women into China for forced marriage or commercial sex-ual exploitation. Reports also indicated that decades of birth


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limits under China’s population control policies combined with a traditional preference for sons may have encouraged a black market for illegal adoptions.

Recommendations


Æ Press Chinese government officials to bring the PRC Popu-lation and Family Planning Law into conformance with inter-national standards set forth in international agreements, in-cluding the 1995 Beijing Declaration, the 1994 Programme of Action of the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Æ Highlight the looming demographic challenges currently fac-ing China in bilateral meetings with Chinese government offi-cials—including a rapidly aging population, shrinking work-force, and sex ratio imbalance. As the universal two-child pol-icy may not adequately address these demographic challenges, urge the Chinese government to heed the recommendations of domestic and international demographic experts by ending, as soon as possible, all birth restrictions on families and abol-ishing ‘‘social compensation fees.’’ Æ Use authorities provided in the Foreign Relations Authoriza-tion Act of 2000 (Public Law No. 106–113) and the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Public Law No. 114–328) to deny entry into the United States of and impose sanctions against Chinese officials who have been directly in-volved in the formulation, implementation, or enforcement of China’s coercive family planning policies, including those who have forced men and women to undergo sterilizations and abortions. Æ Call on China’s central and local governments to vigorously enforce provisions of Chinese laws that provide for punishment of officials and other individuals who engage in these abuses. Æ Publicly link, with supporting evidence, the sex ratio imbal-ance exacerbated by China’s population control policies with potential regional humanitarian and security concerns—human trafficking, crime, increased internal and external migration, and other possible serious social, economic, and political prob-lems—and discuss and address these issues in bilateral and multilateral dialogues.

SPECIAL TOPIC: FORCED EVICTIONS IN BEIJING MUNICIPALITY

Findings

• In November 2017, Beijing municipal authorities responded to a fire in a migrant neighborhood with a campaign of forced evictions. On November 18, a fire broke out in an apartment building, killing 19 people. Of the 19 victims, 17 were mi-grants, meaning they were registered in localities outside of


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Beijing under the Chinese government’s household registration (hukou) system. • Following the fire, the Beijing government launched a cam-paign to inspect buildings for fire hazards, which resulted in large-scale forced evictions and demolitions in migrant neigh-borhoods across Beijing. Some affected residents reported being forced to leave their homes within three days, with some given a few hours’ notice or less. The Commission did not observe of-ficial reports on the number of people evicted in Beijing, but international media estimated that tens of thousands were af-fected. The number of migrants in Beijing reportedly fell by 132,000 from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017. • As events unfolded, some migrants and locals attempted to confront government officials over their evictions. Non-govern-mental organizations, companies, and individuals offered as-sistance to displaced migrants. Internet users engaged in on-line debates and criticized the eviction campaign as videos showing evictions, demolitions, and displaced migrant workers spread quickly on Chinese social media. • The government responded by restricting domestic reporting on the evictions, and censoring online discussion and civil soci-ety groups. Authorities also detained an artist for sharing vid-eos of the evictions and detained six others, reportedly for helping the artist flee. Authorities released the seven on bail and forced the artist to leave Beijing and return to his home-town in another province. • Some observers viewed the eviction campaign that began in November 2017 as part of the Beijing government’s long-term plan to limit the population of Beijing. In September 2017, cen-tral authorities approved Beijing municipal authorities’ plan to cap Beijing’s population at 23 million by 2020. In December 2017, central authorities also approved a plan to cap Shang-hai’s population at 25 million by 2035. • Actions taken by Chinese government officials enforcing the eviction campaign in Beijing contravene both international standards and Chinese law, and restrictions arising from the hukou system contravene international human rights stand-ards guaranteeing freedom of residence.

Recommendations


Æ Call on Chinese authorities to end forced evictions across China, and to follow both international and Chinese law in providing adequate notice, compensation, and assistance to residents when public safety requires demolishing dangerous structures. Æ Encourage the Chinese government to expand both the rights of migrant workers in China, and the space for civil soci-ety organizations that provide social services and legal assist-ance to migrant workers, rather than cracking down on such organizations. Note that improving the rights of migrant work-ers and expanding their access to social services is likely to


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lower the chances of spontaneous, large-scale protests, while large-scale forced evictions could increase the likelihood of such protests. Æ Call on Chinese authorities to accelerate reforms to the hukou system, including lowering restrictions on migration to major cities and centers of economic opportunity; equalizing the level and quality of public benefits and services tied to local hukou and residence permits; and implementing laws and regulations to provide equal treatment for all Chinese citizens, regardless of place of birth, residence, or hukou status. Æ Support programs, organizations, and exchanges with Chi-nese policymakers and academic institutions engaged in re-search and outreach to migrants, in order to advance legal and anti-discrimination assistance for migrants and their families, and to encourage policy debates aimed at eliminating inequal-ity and discrimination connected to residence policies, includ-ing the hukou system.

STATUS OF WOMEN

Findings

• Employment discrimination against women continued to be a serious problem this past year. Employers routinely discrimi-nate against women in hiring, wages, and promotion. Discrimi-natory and sexualized views of women were pervasive in job recruitment advertisements. Gender inequality in employment has increased during the period of market liberalization, and much of the disparity is attributed to the shifting of responsi-bility for child care from the state system (via publicly funded maternity leave and nursery schools) to the private sector, with the resulting burden falling disproportionately to individual women and employer-funded maternity leave. Employers viewed women as more costly than male employees, and such discrimination has worsened with the implementation of the ‘‘universal two-child policy.’’ • Women in China continued to face challenges with domestic and sexual violence. While there were improvements in imple-mentation of the PRC Anti-Domestic Violence Law evidenced by increased awareness and the publishing of local imple-menting regulations, other challenges remained. Chinese courts maintained an evidentiary standard for proving domes-tic violence that was difficult for victims to meet, and victims escaping abusive domestic situations received inadequate sup-port in seeking shelters. • Women in China continued to lack secure rights to property due to a combination of discriminatory policy implementation and adherence to patriarchal cultural values. Officials sug-gested a number of proposals aimed at addressing these issues during the upcoming round of agricultural policy reforms. • Authorities maintained tight restrictions on the political en-vironment for engaging in women’s rights advocacy—a continu-ation of the official repression of women’s rights advocacy be-ginning in 2015. In January 2018, Chinese students, alumni, and faculty initiated a series of independent campaigns to pre-


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Executive Summary

vent sexual harassment on college campuses. These included public allegations of misconduct by individual professors, peti-tions calling on universities to institute policies to prevent sex-ual harassment, and public requests for information about uni-versity actions in past sexual assault cases. While some actions taken by university and government authorities were sup-portive of the issues raised by the campaigns, official responses nonetheless prioritized suppressing grassroots mobilization. Reports of sexual harassment in other sectors such as manu-facturing, journalism, civil society, the state-sanctioned Bud-dhist community, and the Protestant community in Hong Kong also drew public attention.

Recommendations


Æ Publicly and privately urge the Chinese government to re-spect the freedom of expression and assembly of all rights ad-vocates, and in particular to refrain from harassing and intimi-dating independent women’s rights advocates seeking to in-crease awareness about sexual harassment in public areas. Æ Urge the Chinese government to publicly expand its commit-ment to gender equality through measures such as increasing the number of women in the highest levels of political leader-ship, instituting gender equality and anti-harassment trainings in government workplaces, and challenging discriminatory atti-tudes based on gender through public education. Æ Commend the Chinese government for recent legal develop-ments aimed at promoting the welfare of women and gender equality. These include the passage of the PRC Anti-Domestic Violence Law and the inclusion of a gender discrimination case among the Supreme People’s Court’s guiding cases. Encourage the government to strengthen formal support services for im-plementation—for example, by increasing funding for health services or shelters for women experiencing violence, providing funding and support for attorneys for legal services, and allow-ing independent lawyers and advocates to assist with the pro-motion and implementation of laws related to gender equality through lawsuits and public campaigns. Æ Support international exchanges among academics, legal ad-vocates, non-governmental organizations, and others that focus on the implementation and enforcement of recently adopted laws promoting gender equity. In particular, facilitate and sup-port technical assistance programs that would help both men and women working in law enforcement and the judiciary to implement the PRC Anti-Domestic Violence Law effectively and challenge discriminatory attitudes based on gender. As the first point of contact, law enforcement in particular should be trained in addressing reports of violence in a way that does not undermine victims’ concerns or safety. Æ Facilitate and support technical assistance programs that would help the development of gender equality education in schools and communities.


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Æ Encourage the collection and analysis of data on gender- based disparities in economic and social life so as to monitor changes.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Findings

• As a State Party to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN TIP Protocol), China is obligated to enact legisla-tion criminalizing human trafficking as defined by the UN TIP Protocol. The definition of human trafficking in Chinese law, however, remains inconsistent with UN TIP Protocol stand-ards, contributing to the difficulty of assessing the scale of human trafficking in China. • The Commission observed reports of human trafficking from Southeast Asian countries to China for forced marriage and forced labor, as well as trafficking of Chinese nationals to the United States for forced labor and sexual exploitation. • The Chinese government continued to subject individuals to forced labor during pretrial detention and in administrative de-tention centers. Local authorities in Hotan prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, reportedly required some Uyghur women and children to perform forced labor. • This past year, Chinese workers migrating within China were at risk of human trafficking, and government restrictions on worker rights exacerbated this risk. A lack of economic op-portunity in Southeast Asian countries contributed to human trafficking vulnerability in that region. China’s sex ratio imbal-ance has created a demand for marriageable women that may contribute to human trafficking for forced marriage. In addi-tion, the Chinese government continued to treat North Korean refugees as economic migrants and maintained a policy of re-patriating undocumented North Koreans, leaving the refugees vulnerable to trafficking. • The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) reportedly continued to generate revenue by sending DPRK nationals to work in China under conditions that may constitute forced labor. Reports from October 2017 in-dicated that many workers had been or would be sent back to North Korea due to the Chinese government’s enforcement of UN sanctions; however, the DPRK reportedly began sending workers to China again in March 2018, possibly in violation of UN sanctions. • Hong Kong remained a destination for human trafficking, with migrant domestic workers particularly at risk of exploi-tation for forced labor. The Hong Kong government maintained that comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation was unneces-sary and that human trafficking in Hong Kong was rare.

Recommendations



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Executive Summary

Æ Urge the Chinese government to abide by its commitments under the UN TIP Protocol to bring anti-trafficking legislation into alignment with international standards, specifically with regard to China’s legal definition of human trafficking. Empha-size that this would facilitate better data collection and cross- border comparisons, which in turn would better inform domes-tic and multilateral anti-trafficking policies. Call on the Chi-nese government to extend coverage of the UN TIP Protocol to include Hong Kong. Æ Support U.S. Government efforts to improve human traf-ficking data collection. Work with regional governments, multi-lateral institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to encourage and support the collection of more accu-rate data in order to better assess the scale and root causes of human trafficking in Asia and monitor the effectiveness of anti-trafficking measures. Urge the Chinese government to col-lect and publish relevant law enforcement data. Æ Discuss in appropriate bilateral and multilateral meetings the importance of protecting worker rights as a means of com-bating human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor. Stress that when workers are able to organize and advocate for their rights, they are less vulnerable to all forms of exploitation, in-cluding forced labor. Highlight the September 2016 report of Maina Kiai, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, which stat-ed that the failure to protect workers’ right to freedom of asso-ciation ‘‘directly contributes to problems such as human traf-ficking and slavery.’’ Æ Encourage and engage in continued regional cooperation to combat human trafficking through multilateral agreements and forums such as the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initia-tive Against Trafficking, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the East Asia Summit. Such regional cooperation should address migration and the flow of refugees, poverty, sex ratio imbalances, and other risk factors that contribute to human trafficking. Æ Pursue cooperation on anti-trafficking efforts through the U.S.-China Joint Liaison Group on Law Enforcement Coopera-tion. Support the work of the U.S. Department of State’s Inter-national Law Enforcement Academy Program in Bangkok, Thailand, to build regional law enforcement capacity. Æ Facilitate international exchanges among civil society groups and industry associations to raise awareness of best practices for identifying and combating human trafficking in supply chains. Support NGOs working on anti-trafficking research, education, prevention, and victims’ services throughout Asia. Æ Incorporate language into bilateral and multilateral eco-nomic agreements requiring member countries to improve data collection on human trafficking and to take concrete steps to-ward eliminating human trafficking within their borders.


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Executive Summary

NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES IN CHINA

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, the Chinese government’s policy of detaining North Korean refugees and re-patriating them to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remained in place, in violation of its obligations under international human rights and refugee law. • Heightened security measures along the China-North Korea and China-Southeast Asia borders increased the risks North Korean refugees face, and may be limiting the outflow of refu-gees from the DPRK. South Korean Ministry of Unification data indicated that 1,127 North Korean refugees reached South Korea in 2017, continuing a trend of significant decline since 2009 when the yearly number of refugees entering South Korea peaked at 2,914. • After North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s March 2018 visit to China, Chinese authorities reportedly increased the mone-tary reward for reporting North Korean refugees hiding inside China. As a result, Chinese authorities reportedly caught and detained many North Korean refugees. • Chinese authorities appeared to have intensified crackdowns on organizations and individuals in China, particularly South Korean Christian missionaries and churches, that have played a crucial role in assisting and facilitating the movement of North Korean refugees outside the DPRK. • North Korean women who enter China illegally remain par-ticularly vulnerable to human trafficking. The majority of North Korean refugees leaving the DPRK are women, many of whom are trafficked from the DPRK into, or within, China for the purposes of forced marriage and commercial sexual exploi-tation. • Many children born to Chinese fathers and North Korean mothers remain deprived of basic rights to education and other public services owing to a lack of legal resident status in China, which constitutes a violation of international law.

Recommendations


Æ Urge the Chinese government to recognize North Koreans in China as refugees, especially as refugees sur place who fear persecution upon return to their country of origin, regardless of their reason for leaving the DPRK; immediately halt the re-patriation of North Korean refugees; adopt asylum or refugee legislation and incorporate the principle of non-refoulment into domestic legislation; establish a responsible government insti-tution and mechanism to determine asylee or refugee status for North Koreans seeking international protection in China, in co-operation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; and allow North Korean refugees safe passage to another country, including to the Republic of Korea.


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Executive Summary

Æ Consider using the suite of sanctions that are available, where appropriate, against Chinese government agencies and individuals involved in the repatriation of North Korean refu-gees; and press for increased international monitoring of and accountability for the Chinese government’s treatment of refu-gees. Urge Chinese authorities to recognize the legal status of North Korean women who marry or have children with Chi-nese citizens, and ensure that all such children are granted resident status and access to education and other public serv-ices in accordance with Chinese law and international stand-ards. Æ Appoint and confirm the U.S. Special Envoy on North Ko-rean Human Rights Issues, and encourage the Special Envoy to work with South Korean counterparts to coordinate efforts related to humanitarian assistance and human rights pro-motion for North Korean refugees in China, in accordance with the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act (Public Law No. 115–198).

PUBLIC HEALTH

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, the Chinese government and Communist Party implemented institutional reforms to support evolving public health priorities and en-gaged in international exchanges focused on public health issues. • Health-based discrimination in employment and education continued, and universities continued to experience short-comings with accessible facilities for disabled students. To in-crease school completion rates, authorities in different local-ities issued guidance implementing a July 2017 State Council General Office circular that included a focus on disabled stu-dents. • Authorities continued to suppress public health information in sensitive cases. For three months in 2017, authorities in Hunan province did not acknowledge publicly a tuberculosis outbreak at a high school in Taojiang county, Yiyang munici-pality, Hunan, that resulted in 29 confirmed cases. • This past year, authorities continued efforts and took new approaches to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, but social stig-ma and authorities’ efforts to suppress HIV/AIDS rights advo-cacy continued. • People with mental illness—many of whom suffer from addi-tional disadvantages—remained at risk of discrimination and faced inadequate access to medical care. Authorities continued to forcibly commit individuals without mental illness to psy-chiatric facilities to punish rights advocacy. In February 2018, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate reportedly released provi-sions clarifying the procuratorate’s role in supervising proce-dures that include psychiatric treatment and assessment in criminal cases, but the actual effect remained unclear. • Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) compelled residents to submit to the large-scale collec-


47

Executive Summary

tion of biometric data intended for dual use by public health and public security authorities. These efforts coincided with broader efforts by public security authorities to collect and in-tegrate personal information to predict perceived threats to public security, as part of efforts to maintain ‘‘stability’’ or ‘‘harmony.’’

Recommendations


Æ Continue to support technical assistance and exchange pro-grams in public health. Require that U.S.-China cooperative programs include the participation of U.S. and Chinese non- governmental organizations and a focus on human rights. In-troduce human rights as an area of focus in the U.S.-China So-cial and Cultural Dialogue. Æ Urge Chinese officials—including officials in the newly formed National Health Commission—to focus on effective im-plementation of laws and regulations that prohibit health- based discrimination in employment and education. Encourage Chinese officials to highlight improvements to standards at the subnational level, such as the amendment of discriminatory provisions for hiring teachers in Fujian province discussed in this section. Where appropriate, share the United States’ ongo-ing experience with and efforts in promoting the rights of per-sons with disabilities in education and employment, through non-governmental advocacy and services, and legal and regu-latory means. Æ Call attention to Chinese authorities’ efforts to suppress public health information and health-related rights advocacy. Raise individual cases in meetings with Chinese officials, such as the case of HIV/AIDS rights advocate Sun Ya and medical doctor Tan Qindong. Æ Urge the Chinese government to establish panels of legal, medical, social work, and security professionals from within and outside the government to monitor and report on imple-mentation of the PRC Mental Health Law (MHL) and initia-tives under the National Mental Health Work Plan (2015– 2020) to ensure that local implementation consistently meets standards of care and rights protection stipulated in the MHL, the PRC Law on the Protection of the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, and international standards.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, despite top Chinese Communist Party and government leaders high-lighting the importance of protecting the environment, environ-mental pollution remained a major challenge. Chinese authori-ties’ top-down approach to environmental issues limited the role of civil society and the public. In October 2017, at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, President


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Executive Summary

and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping avowed the impor-tance of China’s top-down approach to environmental protec-tion in ‘‘ensuring harmony between humans and nature.’’ • In March 2018, central authorities established a new Min-istry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) to replace the Min-istry of Environmental Protection, and a new Ministry of Nat-ural Resources to replace the Ministry of Land and Resources. According to a number of environmental experts, the MEE may strengthen environmental protection by consolidating environ-mental oversight and improving bureaucratic efficiency. • In early 2018, authorities reported achieving the govern-ment’s five-year (2013–2017) targets for improving air quality, but implementation of the plan resulted in significant hard-ships. In order to meet the air quality targets, authorities shut down thousands of factories and mandated that millions of Chinese stop using coal for heat during the winter, even though no replacement was available. An international advo-cacy group collected 5,822 posts to Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, in November and December 2017, to document citizens’ complaints about the lack of heat, and inter-national media reported that millions may have lacked proper heating in subfreezing temperatures. The government’s top en-vironmental official acknowledged that some local governments had even closed enterprises that were in compliance with emis-sions rules. • During this reporting year, state-run and other official media reported on multiple incidents in which Chinese officials at-tempted to manipulate environmental monitoring data or failed to investigate reports of serious pollution. In January 2018, the Beijing Times reported that Shizuishan municipality officials in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region attempted to spray water near the building that housed the monitoring equipment to improve air quality readings, but instead turned the building into an ‘‘ice sculpture’’ after the spray froze. Short-comings in environmental transparency, including access to credible official environmental data, continued to be a long- term obstacle to assessing environmental quality and the effi-cacy of pollution control efforts. • Although some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have standing as plaintiffs in public interest lawsuits, most ‘‘public interest’’ litigation continued to be brought by the government. Cases in which NGOs initiated public interest lawsuits this past year included litigation against a hydroelectric power company in Yunnan province over damage to the rainforest, and litigation against local governments in Zhengzhou munici-pality, Henan province, for illegally moving culturally signifi-cant trees. • Chinese citizens continued to raise their concerns about health issues related to the environment through street-level protests and other forms of public advocacy. Chinese environ-mental advocates were detained during this reporting year for protesting land reclamation, illegal quarrying, and mining.


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Executive Summary

Recommendations


Æ Call on the Chinese government to cease harassment of en-vironmental advocates and follow international standards on freedom of speech, association, and assembly, including those contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Chi-na’s Constitution. Raise the detention of environmental advo-cates Karma and Chen Wuquan in meetings with Chinese offi-cials. Æ Support efforts by Chinese and U.S. groups working to ex-pand awareness of citizens’ environmental rights in China and the protection of those rights. Æ Encourage Chinese leaders to strengthen the rule of law and transparency in the environmental and climate sectors. Raise questions with Chinese officials about the manipulation of en-vironmental data and censorship of environmental news re-porting. U.S. officials should also raise questions about the lack of transparency regarding public disclosure of emissions data from key polluting enterprises. Æ Continue to support U.S.-China technical and legal collabo-ration on environmental protection and energy efficiency. U.S.- China cooperation should focus on programs aimed at increas-ing media freedom and public participation; improving trans-parency and the rule of law; reducing air, water, and soil con-tamination; and improving government accountability.

CIVIL SOCIETY

Findings

• During the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, the Chinese government and Communist Party continued to view civil soci-ety’s primary role as ‘‘cooperating with’’ (xietong) the Party’s agenda for social governance under one-party rule. At the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping reiterated the role of Chinese civil society in the context of Party and government leadership: ‘‘Party committees exercise leadership, government assumes responsibility, non-governmental actors provide as-sistance, and the public get involved.’’ Ever since Xi’s ascend-ance to the Party’s top leadership role in late 2012, advocacy organizations operating in previously tolerated ‘‘gray areas’’ have experienced what experts describe as a ‘‘chilling effect.’’ • This past year, the government continued to suppress the rights of Chinese human rights defenders and political groups working on human rights advocacy. These advocates, among others, included Zhen Jianghua from Human Rights Campaign in China; Guo Qingjun and other members of the National Tourism Chat Group that provided support for families of polit-ical prisoners; and Xu Qin, Qin Yongmin, and Zhao Suli, affili-ated with the China Human Rights Watch group.


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Executive Summary

• The government continued to implement the PRC Law on the Management of Overseas Non-Governmental Organiza-tions’ Activities in Mainland China, which took effect in Janu-ary 2017. While some international NGOs have successfully registered representative offices in China, including philan-thropic organizations that had relationships with local govern-ments, at least four organizations that have long worked on training lawyers, the protection of women, and LGBT rights re-ported that they were unable to register or obtain temporary activity permits. Other organizations that work in human rights and rule of law chose to suspend their operations or leave China. • Chinese authorities continued to detain and prosecuted Tai-wan human rights NGO volunteer Lee Ming-cheh this past year. After authorities detained Lee in March 2017, the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office subsequently confirmed that Chinese authorities were investigating Lee for ‘‘endangering state security’’ and had formally arrested Lee on suspicion of ‘‘subversion of state power’’ in May 2017. On September 11, 2017, the Yueyang Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Hunan province tried Lee on the charge of ‘‘subversion of state power’’—to which he pleaded guilty and for which he expressed remorse—and on November 28, sentenced him to five years in prison. Observers from international human rights organiza-tions suspected that authorities coerced Lee into confessing, calling the trial ‘‘outrageous’’ and ‘‘politically motivated.’’ • This past year, the government focused on cracking down on ‘‘illegal social organizations,’’ targeting those that ‘‘threaten state security and social stability.’’ In January 2018, the Min-istry of Civil Affairs issued the Measures for Social Organiza-tions Credit Information Management, which authorize the government to create an official list for organizations that are ‘‘severely illegal [and] not trustworthy.’’ • Two years after the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) released draft revisions to the three major regulations for civil society organizations, the MCA released new draft regulations for pub-lic comment in early August 2018, combining the three regula-tions that form the core of the regulatory system for domestic social service organizations, foundations, and social associa-tions into one document. • The National People’s Congress approved State Council re-form plans, which provide for the establishment of a new Inter-national Development Cooperation Agency that will integrate foreign aid and development assistance efforts, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In November 2017, the Director of the International Department of the Party Central Com-mittee—a key Party department charged with extending the Party’s influence and advancing its interests overseas—opened the first Silk Road NGO Cooperation Network Forum designed to strengthen cooperation between NGOs among participating BRI countries.


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Executive Summary

Recommendations


Æ Urge the Chinese government to hasten the enactment of legal provisions pertaining to civil society that are consistent with China’s Constitution as well as China’s international obli-gations. Call on China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Æ Urge the Chinese government to revise or repeal the PRC Law on the Management of Overseas NGOs’ Activities in Mainland China and revise the PRC Charity Law to reflect the principles of the ICCPR, especially with regard to the rights to freedom of association, assembly, and expression. Æ Call on the Chinese government to cease harassment of civil society advocates and NGOs and provide adequate procedural due process for those individuals subject to criminal investiga-tions and trials. Æ Integrate civil society issues into bilateral discussions and agreements with Chinese officials to promote reciprocity in the approach and implementation of civil society exchanges be-tween the United States and China. Æ Continue to fund, monitor, and evaluate foreign assistance programs in China that support democracy promotion, rule of law, and human rights advocacy. Æ Promote a rules-based international development model that encompasses human rights protections for developing countries instead of an alternative model of development aid that delinks human rights and rule of law considerations. Æ Take measures to facilitate the participation of Chinese civil society advocates in relevant international conferences and fo-rums, and support international training to build their leader-ship capacity in non-profit management, public policy advo-cacy, and media relations.

INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

Findings

• Chinese Communist Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping demanded that all sectors of society obey the Party, which increasingly came under Xi’s personal leadership. The Party’s constitution was amended to recognize Xi as the core leader, and the country’s constitution was amended to remove the existing term limits on the presidency, potentially allowing Xi to remain president indefinitely. Although official news media touted wide public support of the amendment, authori-ties reportedly suppressed dissenting voices by means of cen-sorship and detention. • Xi Jinping further undermined previous limited attempts to develop intraparty democracy when he decided to handpick the candidates for China’s power center—the Communist Party Central Committee Political Bureau (Politburo) and its stand-ing committee—which marks a departure from the existing


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Executive Summary

practice of having a group of senior Party officials nominate candidates. • Several developments this past year signified regression from international standards of democratic governance. The political structure underwent significant reorganization, tight-ening the Party’s control over the state and society. For exam-ple, the Central Party School merged with the Chinese Acad-emy for Governance, a state entity, to ensure government offi-cials’ ideological conformity. Moreover, the Party assumed managerial functions over the press and the media, and took on policymaking authority over religious and ethnic minority matters. • The National People’s Congress created a new government agency, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC). The NSC is responsible for investigating cases of corruption and official misconduct, and in practice is an extension of the Party’s Cen-tral Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). While the CCDI deals with cases concerning Party members, the NSC has jurisdiction over the entire public sector and has authority to extrajudicially detain anyone suspected of being complicit in corruption or official misconduct, potentially affecting private and foreign citizens. • As corruption remained a significant problem in China, re-ports continued to emerge this past year highlighting the polit-ical nature of the anticorruption campaign, with the former CCDI head identifying political corruption, referring to activi-ties that dilute the Party’s centralized power, as the worst form of corruption. • The Commission observed no progress in expanding the scope of elections and saw reports of officials suppressing meaningful participation in or speech regarding elections. In terms of public participation in the rulemaking process, the State Council amended two sets of regulations requiring the rulemaking body to solicit public comments. The amendments, however, did not provide for a mechanism to ensure consider-ation of public comments. The amendments added language re-quiring compliance with the Party’s policies and decisions.

Recommendations


Æ Support U.S. research programs that document and analyze the governing institutions and ideological campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as its influence over compa-nies, government agencies, legislative and judicial bodies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Æ Employ a ‘‘whole-of-government’’ approach to encourage Chi-nese authorities to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and release individuals detained or impris-oned for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, associa-tion, and assembly. These individuals include those mentioned in this report and in the Commission’s Political Prisoner Data-base, such as Yu Qiyong, Liu Feiyue, and Qin Yongmin.


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Executive Summary

Æ Support joint U.S.-China cooperative programs to develop independent village committee and people’s congress election monitoring systems. Encourage central and local Party and government leaders to implement free and fair elections across China. Continue to fund, monitor, and evaluate the effective-ness of democracy promotion and rule of law programs in China. Æ Support organizations working in China that seek to work with local governments and NGOs to improve transparency, es-pecially with regard to efforts to expand and improve China’s open government information initiatives. Urge Party officials to further increase the transparency of Party affairs. Æ Call on the Chinese government to improve procedures through which citizens may hold their officials accountable out-side of the internal Party-led anticorruption campaign. Urge Party and government officials to establish and improve public participation in government affairs. Encourage top-level offi-cials to reform governing institutions to promote an authentic multi-party system with protections for freedom of speech, as-sociation, and assembly.

COMMERCIAL RULE OF LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Findings

• Since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese government has made progress toward meeting requirements for improving transparency of trade- related laws, yet still falls short in some areas such as pub-lishing local regulations and translating trade-related docu-ments. Although the government publishes many trade-related laws and administrative regulations, the government has in many cases failed to publish local regulations and other legal documents such as opinions, circulars, and subsidy measures. • The Commission observed reports of improved enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in some areas, though con-cerns remained about IPR infringement, including forced tech-nology transfers. A March 2018 report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) found that the Chinese gov-ernment uses restrictions on foreign ownership in certain sec-tors of the economy to force technology transfers through the establishment of joint ventures with Chinese firms, and that authorities often demand technology transfers orally or infor-mally to avoid the appearance of violating international trade obligations. • The Chinese government took some steps toward meeting the WTO requirement for equal treatment of domestic and for-eign companies, though 75 percent of U.S. companies surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in China reported feel-ing ‘‘less welcome in China than before.’’ Reports continued to emerge this past year of favorable treatment of domestic firms over foreign firms through the blocking of foreign websites and other formal restrictions on foreign firms. The Commission fur-ther observed reports of other forms of preferential treatment,


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Executive Summary

both of domestic firms and of government- or Party-connected firms. • The Chinese Communist Party and government maintain a role in most enterprises that operate in mainland China, whether they are state-owned enterprises (SOEs), domestic pri-vate firms, foreign firms, or joint ventures. According to gov-ernment data, as of the end of 2016, 93.2 percent of SOEs and 67.9 percent of private enterprises had Party groups, as did 70 percent of foreign-invested enterprises. Reports from this past year indicate that the Party and government are attempting to expand their roles in commercial enterprises. • Companies provided a wide range of equipment and services to the government in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), despite reports of the regional government’s severe re-pression of religious freedom and the detention of hundreds of thousands of individuals belonging to Muslim ethnic minority groups in a network of extrajudicial ‘‘political reeducation’’ cen-ters. For example, the international security services company Frontier Services Group reportedly partnered with the state- owned enterprise CITIC Group to invest in a Beijing munici-pality-based security training school that is building a branch in the XUAR to train military and police personnel. • Human rights groups warned that Chinese laws allow for collection of personal data from commercial firms without ade-quately protecting individuals’ right to privacy as provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Inter-national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Despite these privacy concerns, international companies stored Chinese user data in mainland China to comply with domestic law. Chinese companies also collect large amounts of data from their users. It is unclear how much data these companies share with au-thorities, but reports indicate that domestic technology firms work closely with police and other government authorities. • Government and companies’ large-scale collection of data in China includes the collection of biometric data such as faces, voice samples, and DNA. During this reporting year, the Chi-nese government continued to work with Chinese companies to develop and implement a social credit system that aims to ag-gregate and monitor data that the government and companies collect, which some observers warned could increase the gov-ernment’s capacity for social control. Chinese security authori-ties are also working with companies to integrate improved technology into China’s expanding network of surveillance cameras, despite concerns over the government’s use of surveil-lance to target rights advocates and ethnic minorities. • The Chinese government continued to restrict freedom of ex-pression online by blocking and censoring content. Chinese au-thorities require companies to monitor content on their websites and applications (apps), and in several cases this past year, authorities threatened or punished companies for online content. Faced with the possibility of lost revenue and other forms of punishment, both domestic and international compa-nies engaged in self-censorship. In March 2018, one media scholar described how film industry executives outside main-


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Executive Summary

land China have invited Chinese content regulators to speak at conferences to provide guidance on how to create content that Chinese censors will allow. In the summer of 2018, dozens of international airline companies reportedly changed their inter-national websites to comply with Chinese government demands to remove references to Taiwan as a country.

Recommendations


Æ Work with allies and governments of other market-oriented economies to voice concerns over the unequal treatment of for-eign companies in China and the increasing role of the Chinese Communist Party in Chinese state-owned enterprises, in joint ventures with foreign companies, and in private companies op-erating within mainland China. Æ Encourage the Chinese government to continue to improve enforcement of intellectual property rights, noting that as in-digenous innovation increases in China, stronger enforcement of intellectual property rights will be beneficial to both the United States and China. In public and private meetings with Chinese government counterparts, U.S. officials should high-light the concerns of international businesses regarding contin-ued infringement of intellectual property rights, including through forced technology transfers. Æ In meetings with constituents engaged in business ventures in China, encourage business leaders to adhere to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by devel-oping internal policies to assess and mitigate the risk of com-plicity in the Chinese government’s ongoing abuses of human rights, particularly in regions with egregious human rights vio-lations, such as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Æ USTR should, under WTO rules, request detailed informa-tion from the Chinese government on internet restrictions that result in the blocking of the websites of U.S. companies. If war-ranted, a WTO dispute should be considered. In meetings with Chinese officials, urge the Chinese government to provide re-ciprocal access for and stop blocking Chinese internet users’ ac-cess to U.S. media and technology companies in China. Æ Encourage U.S. companies that receive censorship requests from Chinese authorities to comply with the UN Guiding Prin-ciples on Business and Human Rights and the Global Network Initiative’s Principles on Freedom of Expression and, where possible, disclose such requests to the public.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE

Findings

• Despite reported improvements in the judiciary system’s bu-reaucratic efficiency, increasing political control and continued persecution of rights lawyers undermine citizens’ confidence and ability to seek and obtain justice. Zhou Qiang, a senior Party member and the Supreme People’s Court President, ad-


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vocated for absolute loyalty and obedience to the Chinese Com-munist Party. Zhou said it was the judiciary’s imperative to participate in a political campaign called ‘‘eliminate darkness and evil,’’ which some commentators compared to earlier anti- crime campaigns, such as ‘‘Strike Hard’’ and ‘‘Strike Black,’’ in terms of the potential for serious human rights abuses. • Chinese authorities continued to criminally prosecute rights lawyers and advocates for political reasons, lodging ‘‘endan-gering state security’’ charges against them. For example, a court sentenced rights advocate Wu Gan to eight years in pris-on, and public security officials held rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang under de facto incommunicado pretrial detention for over 1,000 days. Authorities also criminally detained rights lawyers including Li Yuhan and Yu Wensheng for their advo-cacy work in human rights and democracy. • Authorities targeted law firms that engaged in rights de-fense work and harassed them by employing intrusive meas-ures such as stationing officials in the office. Individual law-yers also reported that they experienced harassment in the form of revocation and suspension of licenses, delay in the an-nual license renewal process, exclusion from courthouses, re-striction of movement, and physical assault. • The Supreme People’s Court President Zhou Qiang reported that judicial reform efforts continued to move forward. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress delib-erated draft legislation that would implement a merit-based process in selecting judges. Political alignment, however, re-mained a selection criterion. Legislation concerning the peo-ple’s assessors system may increase citizen participation and improve evidence-based adjudication, but its actual effect has yet to be seen. • The legal aid system remained a state-controlled institution. The government took steps to further expand legal aid pro-grams, but it tightened the space for legal aid services not ad-ministered by the government. In January 2018, the All China Lawyers Association issued a set of trial regulations prohib-iting lawyers from accepting cases at discounted rates or with-out fees, except for legal aid cases, which could potentially pre-vent lawyers from providing pro bono legal services to dis-advantaged individuals in cases of social significance. • The Chinese government continued to streamline the peti-tioning system, a mechanism outside of the formal legal system for citizens to present their grievances to authorities. The gov-ernment agency responsible for the petitioning system reported that a substantial percentage of petitions were referred to the administrative and judicial system for resolution. Nevertheless, citizens continued to employ the petitioning system, and some of them faced retaliation, including administrative punishment and criminal prosecution.

Recommendations



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Æ Urge the Chinese government to unconditionally exonerate and lift any restrictions of liberty or eligibility to practice law on rights lawyers and advocates, including Wang Quanzhang, Li Yuhan, Yu Wensheng, Wu Gan, and Jiang Tianyong. Æ Urge the Chinese government to protect the fundamental civil and professional rights of China’s lawyers, to investigate all allegations of abuse against them, and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. Urge the Chinese govern-ment to end all forms of harassment or persecution against the family members of human rights lawyers and advocates, in-cluding surveillance and restrictions on their freedom of move-ment. Æ Urge the Chinese government to stop all forms of persecu-tion or prosecution of petitioners who use the petitioning sys-tem to seek redress for their grievances. Æ Urge leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and govern-ment to grant the judiciary true independence and warn them of the negative impact on the rule of law of involving the judi-ciary in political campaigns. Æ Increase support for programs that promote dialogue be-tween U.S. and Chinese legal experts regarding how China can structure and implement legal reforms. Concomitantly increase support for collaboration between U.S. and Chinese academic and non-governmental entities to help develop programs that enhance the Chinese legal system’s capacity for protecting citi-zens’ rights.

XINJIANG

Findings

• During the reporting year, authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) reportedly arbitrarily de-tained Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui, and others from pre-dominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups in extrajudicial fa-cilities known as ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers or camps. Re-ports from international rights groups, scholars, and media or-ganizations indicated that as many as 800,000 to 1.1 million individuals had been or remained detained at these facilities since around April 2017, after the XUAR People’s Congress adopted the region’s first anti-extremism regulations. U.S.- based scholar Rian Thum noted in August 2018 that initial es-timates of over 1 million detainees were based on information observers obtained in early 2018, but Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others ‘‘have continued to disappear,’’ and officials have contin-ued to plan the construction of additional ‘‘political reeduca-tion’’ facilities, making current figures potentially higher. Secu-rity personnel at these facilities reportedly subjected detainees to torture, medical neglect and maltreatment, and other forms of physical and psychological abuse. • Security personnel reportedly detained people, in most cases indefinitely, in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers based on factors such as praying in a certain way; engaging in ‘‘religious extre-mism’’; having ‘‘politically incorrect’’ views; wanting to travel abroad; or having foreign connections, such as previous travel


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abroad or relatives living in another country. Regional govern-ment authorities reportedly ordered officials in some XUAR ju-risdictions to meet quotas to detain a certain percentage or number of the local population in ‘‘political reeducation’’ camps. Elderly people, minors, and ill individuals were reportedly among those detained in the centers, and a number of detain-ees died due to ill health and poor conditions in the centers. XUAR authorities placed the children of individuals detained in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers in orphanages in some juris-dictions in such high numbers that the orphanages became overcrowded, and in some instances officials responded by sending some children to facilities in provinces outside of the XUAR. • In addition to ‘‘reeducation’’ facilities detaining inmates 24 hours a day, reports from rights groups and media documented other types of ‘‘reeducation’’ facilities and programs. In August 2018, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) reported the findings of a survey it conducted with the organization Equal Rights Initiative (ERI) on ‘‘reeducation’’ programs in the XUAR, including information on both detention and forced at-tendance of ‘‘education sessions’’ during the day or evening. Ac-cording to the report, county or municipal authorities adminis-tered ‘‘reeducation’’ camps, and township or village government officials administered day and evening ‘‘study sessions’’ or ‘‘open camps.’’ CHRD and ERI estimated that as of June 2018, authorities may have forced around 2.2 million XUAR resi-dents to attend day or evening ‘‘education sessions.’’ • A Western researcher and rights advocate presented a case that the severity and extent of ‘‘political reeducation’’ deten-tions and other rights abuses in the XUAR are consistent with ‘‘crimes against humanity,’’ as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In a CNN opinion piece, the researcher argued that the situation in the XUAR ‘‘fits the textbook definition of crimes against humanity.’’ Article 7 of the Rome Statute provides a list of 11 acts that may constitute ‘‘crimes against humanity,’’ ‘‘when committed as part of a wide-spread or systematic attack directed against any civilian popu-lation, with knowledge of the attack.’’ • XUAR authorities detained dozens of XUAR-based family members of six U.S.-based Uyghur Radio Free Asia (RFA) jour-nalists in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers and other locations. In written testimony submitted at a July 2018 Commission hear-ing, RFA journalist Gulchehra Hoja stated, ‘‘more than two dozen of my relatives in China are missing.’’ XUAR authorities reportedly also detained dozens of family members of U.S.- based rights advocate Rebiya Kadeer, including her children and grandchildren. • Analysis of Chinese government data that was published by CHRD in July 2018 showed that 21 percent of all criminal ar-rests in China in 2017 took place in the XUAR, which is home to only 1.5 percent of China’s population. CHRD reported that, according to the research it conducted with ERI, the number of criminal arrests in the XUAR increased by 731 percent in 2017 over 2016, coinciding with policies implemented by XUAR


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Party Secretary Chen Quanguo to enhance regional security following his appointment to the XUAR in August 2016. These figures do not include detentions in ‘‘reeducation’’ camps, which are carried out extrajudicially, though authorities reportedly transferred some ‘‘reeducation’’ camp detainees to prison after a period of time. • Central and regional government authorities implemented intense security measures throughout the XUAR, using secu-rity personnel, surveillance technology, mass detentions, and other methods to tighten state control over predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups in the XUAR. Regional authori-ties reportedly increased their spending on security measures by nearly 93 percent in 2017 compared to 2016; a sample of 18 Chinese provinces and regions saw an average increase of just under 12 percent in 2017. • XUAR authorities oversaw the mass, involuntary collection of DNA and other biometric information from XUAR residents; conducted widespread and frequent checks of residents’ cell phones and required residents to install monitoring applica-tions on their cell phones; maintained checkpoints and facial recognition cameras in neighborhoods, on roads, and in train stations; operated ‘‘convenience police stations,’’ a form of street-level management that enhances authorities’ ability to closely surveil and police local communities; and installed cam-eras in and around mosques and homes, in order to monitor residents’ religious and private activities. XUAR authorities re-portedly use a centralized system called the ‘‘Integrated Joint Operations Platform’’ to gather and analyze data from closed- circuit cameras, computers, smartphones, license plates, and identification cards, as well as individuals’ family planning, banking, and travel records. Authorities used such data to identify individuals they would later investigate and detain, in-cluding in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers. • Authorities in the XUAR imposed restrictions on the Quran, including through confiscation and prohibition on the study of the Quran. In early 2018, local officials in one township report-edly asked residents to sign a pledge stating that neither they nor their family members would study the Quran or learn Ara-bic. In September 2017, officials in locations throughout the XUAR reportedly confiscated Qurans, prayer mats, and other items of Islamic significance from local Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz residents.

Recommendations


Æ Call on the Chinese government to end the mass, arbitrary detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui, and others in ‘‘political reeducation’’ centers, and release those currently de-tained. Call on Chinese officials to allow U.S. officials, diplo-matic representatives of other countries, UN officials, humani-tarian organizations, and international journalists to visit the XUAR and investigate reports of arbitrary detention. Coordi-


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nate with other governments and international non-govern-mental organizations to compile relevant information regarding specific XUAR officials responsible for the arbitrary mass de-tention and abuse of individuals in ‘‘political reeducation’’ cen-ters, in preparation for possible sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Public Law No. 114–328). Æ Call on the Chinese government to end the detention and persecution of the XUAR-based family members of U.S.-based Uyghur Radio Free Asia journalists and U.S.-based Uyghur rights advocate Rebiya Kadeer. Prioritize these cases in inter-actions with senior Chinese government and Communist Party officials, seek clarity as to the whereabouts and well-being of these individuals, and press for their release. Æ Urge U.S. companies selling products, providing services, conducting business, or investing in development initiatives in the XUAR to ensure their products, services, and investment funds do not provide support for XUAR officials’ arbitrary de-tention of ethnic minority individuals or XUAR authorities’ use of technology to otherwise repress and control XUAR residents, rather than for legitimate law enforcement activities. Urge the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce to track the sale of equipment and technology used by Chinese security agencies and U.S. companies’ sale of sur-veillance and crime control technology to XUAR officials, and investigate the legality of such sales according to existing U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Æ Call on the Chinese government to adhere to domestic laws and regulations guaranteeing freedom of religious belief as well as international standards guaranteeing religious practice free from state restrictions. Æ Support efforts to raise greater public awareness of human rights conditions in the XUAR, support initiatives to protect Uyghur culture, increase avenues for Uyghurs to protect their human rights, and undertake more frequent human rights-fo-cused visits to the XUAR. Æ Call on the Chinese government to consult with non-Han Chinese parents, teachers, and students regarding which lan-guage or languages of instruction should be used in XUAR schools, from the preschool to the university level. Call on Chi-nese officials to provide parents and students a choice of in-struction in the Uyghur language and other non-Chinese lan-guages prevalent in the XUAR, as mandated in Article 4 of China’s Constitution and Article 10 of the PRC Regional Eth-nic Autonomy Law.

TIBET

Findings

• There has been no formal dialogue between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and Chinese Communist Party and govern-ment officials since the ninth round of dialogue was held in January 2010. On November 23, 2017, the Dalai Lama re-affirmed the Middle Way Approach, stating that the Tibetan


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people ‘‘are not seeking independence’’ and that they ‘‘want to stay with China.’’ The Chinese government continues to regard the Dalai Lama as a leader of ‘‘separatist forces.’’ • The Chinese government maintains that only it has the right to decide the Dalai Lama’s successor. The current Dalai Lama reiterated his position on his reincarnation and underscored that it is not a matter for the Chinese government or Party to decide, but rather a matter reserved for himself, Tibetan Bud-dhist leaders, and the Tibetan people. • The Party and government continued implementing repres-sive policies in Tibetan autonomous areas through the use of extensive and intrusive surveillance, strict regulations and rules to restrict Tibetans’ fundamental rights, and pervasive displays of police and military force. Domestic security spend-ing in the Tibet Autonomous Region grew 404 percent between 2007 and 2016, while domestic security spending in two Ti-betan prefectures in Sichuan province increased nearly 300 percent over the same time period. • The Party and government continued to violate the right of religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhist monastics and laypersons through a system of pervasive controls and restric-tions on religious practice. This past year, for example, the Chinese government imposed Party administration on the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute, the site of massive demolitions and expulsions that started in 2016. In submissions to the UN Human Rights Council for China’s upcoming Universal Peri-odic Review, advocacy groups have documented increasing se-curity and militarization of Tibet in the name of countering ‘‘terrorism’’ and ‘‘separatism.’’ • Self-immolations by Tibetans reportedly focusing on political and religious issues continued during this past year. As of Au-gust 13, 2018, there were three known self-immolations in Ti-betan autonomous areas of China during the Commission’s 2018 reporting year, all of which were confirmed to be fatal, bringing the total number of such self-immolations by Tibetans living in China to 147 since 2009. As in the past, the self-im-molators publicly called for the long life of the Dalai Lama, his return from exile, and freedom for Tibet. • A court in Yushu (Yulshul) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai province, convicted Tibetan language rights advocate Tashi Wangchug (Tashi Wangchuk) of ‘‘inciting separatism’’ and sentenced him to five years in prison on May 22, 2018. Tashi Wangchug stood trial on January 4, 2018, nearly two years after the New York Times interviewed him and pub-lished a short film about his advocacy for Tibetan language education. • The restriction of information about a February 2018 fire at the 1,300-year-old Jokhang Temple in Lhasa municipality, Tibet Autonomous Region, has caused many Tibetans to fear that the damage is far worse than has been reported. • Filmmaker Dondrub Wangchen (Dhondup Wangchen), who was kept under strict surveillance after his release from prison in June 2014, escaped from China in fall 2017 and reunited with his family in the United States.


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• Chinese authorities released four political prisoners, among them writer Drukar Gyal (pen name Shogjang) on March 19, 2018, and popular singer Gonpo Tenzin around August 2. All four political prisoners had been detained in contravention of international standards of freedom of expression. • Environmental regulations, infrastructure projects, and tour-ism have displaced Tibetan nomads and contribute to the Chi-nese government’s control of Tibetan areas.

Recommendations


Æ Encourage the Chinese government and Communist Party to respect, as a matter of the right of religious freedom and as recognized under Chinese and international law, that the deci-sion regarding the Dalai Lama’s succession or reincarnation must be reserved for the current Dalai Lama, Tibetan Bud-dhist leaders, and the Tibetan people. Æ Urge the Chinese government to recognize the role of restric-tive Party policies and government measures, and the increas-ing securitization of Tibetan autonomous areas of China, in Ti-betan self-immolations and protests. Urge the Chinese govern-ment to cease treating the Dalai Lama as a security threat, and stress to the government the importance of respecting and protecting Tibetan culture and language—policy changes that would promote and protect social stability in Tibetan areas. Æ Encourage the Chinese government to respect the right of Tibetans to travel domestically as well as internationally, and to allow access to the Tibetan autonomous areas of China to international journalists, representatives of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, U.S. Government offi-cials, and members of the Tibetan diaspora living around the world. Æ Urge the Chinese government to withdraw the charges against Tibetan language rights advocate Tashi Wangchug and stress that peacefully advocating for genuine bilingual edu-cation—a right recognized under Chinese and international law—is not a crime. Æ In interactions with Chinese officials, call for the release of Tibetan political prisoners currently detained or imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their human rights. The records of de-tained Tibetans in the Commission’s Political Prisoner Data-base—albeit an incomplete picture of the extent of Tibetan de-tentions and disappearances—provides a useful resource for such interactions with Chinese officials. Urge the Chinese gov-ernment and its security forces to cease using arbitrary deten-tion, disappearance, beatings, torture, and intimidation to sup-press and punish Tibetans’ peaceful exercise of their rights. Æ Urge the Chinese government to take fully into account the views and preferences of Tibetans when planning infrastruc-ture, natural resource development, settlement or resettlement projects, and tourist attractions in the Tibetan areas of China.


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Æ Continue to request that the Chinese government invite an independent representative of an international organization to meet with Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama, whom the Dalai Lama recognized in 1995, and who has been held incommunicado, along with his parents, since May 17, 1995.

DEVELOPMENTS IN HONG KONG AND MACAU

Findings

• During its 2018 reporting year, the Commission observed a continued erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, as guaranteed under the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ policy enshrined in the Basic Law in accordance with the principles of the 1984 Sino- British Joint Declaration. • In March 2018, a Legislative Council (LegCo) by-election was held to replace legislative seats vacated by four out of six dis-qualified pro-democracy legislators. Candidates from both the pro-democracy and pro-establishment camps won two seats each. After the March by-election, the pro-democracy camp held a total of 16 seats in geographical constituencies, which is not enough to veto bills, while the pro-establishment camp maintained a majority of 17 seats. During the nomination pe-riod preceding the March by-election, the government of Hong Kong carried out what observers called ‘‘political screening’’ of prospective election candidates for the LegCo based on their political party or political beliefs. • The Hong Kong government continued to pursue cases brought by the Hong Kong government against leaders and participants of the 2014 pro-democracy protests and activists from the political opposition. As of April 2018, the government reportedly brought a total of 40 court cases against 26 pro-de-mocracy leaders since 2014, resulting in 13 convictions among the 22 concluded cases. • In October 2017, authorities released on bail democracy ac-tivists and Nobel Peace Prize nominees Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, and Alex Chow Yong-kang, after their imprisonment in August 2017, to appeal their prison sen-tences of six to eight months ordered by the Court of Appeal on charges related to ‘‘unlawful assembly.’’ In February 2018, the Court of Final Appeal overturned Wong, Law, and Chow’s sentences. • Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials moved forward on ‘‘co-location’’ plans for the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link in West Kowloon despite opposition from activists, politicians, and law-yers. The plan allows the enforcement of mainland Chinese law by mainland officials in a designated ‘‘Mainland Port Area’’ within the West Kowloon Station. The Hong Kong Bar Associa-tion criticized the central government’s approval of the co-loca-tion plan as a serious violation of the Basic Law, asserting that it undermines the rule of law and the ‘‘one country, two sys-tems’’ framework in Hong Kong.


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• The Commission observed reports of restrictions on the free-dom of expression and association in Hong Kong against aca-demics and politicians who hold views the government deems unfavorable, including Chin Wan-kan, Johannes Chan, Benny Tai, Cheng Chung-tai, and Andy Chan. In advance of the UN Human Rights Council’s review of China’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 53 Hong Kong non-governmental organizations raised concerns about the narrowing space for lawful dissent and expression in Hong Kong and the future of democratic development. • Chinese authorities first released and then detained Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, one of the five Hong Kong booksellers ab-ducted and brought to mainland China in late 2015. In October 2017, authorities reportedly released Gui from custody after two years of detention for an alleged ‘‘traffic offense.’’ In Janu-ary 2018, Gui was forcibly detained by plainclothes Chinese authorities while he was traveling with two Swedish diplomats to Beijing municipality, reportedly to seek medical examination for neurological symptoms. Gui has appeared in at least three televised confessions on mainland and Hong Kong news media outlets, which the international NGO Safeguard Defenders be-lieves are typically extracted through threats and torture, and used for both domestic and overseas propaganda. • The Commission did not observe progress in Macau toward ‘‘an electoral system based on universal and equal suffrage ’’ in line with the ICCPR, as recommended by the UN Human Rights Committee. This past year, proposed legislative amend-ments, the suspension of a pro-democracy legislator, and the denial of entry to Macau of political figures and writers raised concerns regarding Macau’s autonomy and rule of law.

Recommendations


Æ Consider enacting the Hong Kong Human Rights and De-mocracy Act (S. 417/H.R. 3856, 115th Cong., 1st Sess.) to mon-itor the state of Hong Kong’s autonomy from mainland China and reaffirm U.S. support for democratization in Hong Kong. Æ Emphasize in meetings with Chinese and Hong Kong offi-cials that the continued erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy under the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ principle, and as guaran-teed in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, threatens the underpinnings of U.S. policy toward Hong Kong, particularly Hong Kong’s separate treatment under U.S. law. Æ Urge the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to restart the electoral reform process and work toward implementing Chief Executive and Legislative Council elections by universal suffrage, in accordance with Articles 45 and 68 of the Basic Law and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Æ Call on the Chinese and Macau governments to set a timeline for implementing elections in Macau for Chief Execu-tive and the Legislative Assembly by universal suffrage, as re-


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quired under Article 25 of the ICCPR and repeatedly urged by the UN Human Rights Committee.


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